


Brosencrantz and Chilldenstern Are Dudes

by HugeAlienPie



Series: All's Well That Samwell [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, College, Crossover, Food, Incompetent Journalism, M/M, Magic, Marriage Proposal, Mystery, POV Alternating, Pack Dynamics, Panic Attacks, Samwell Hockey-Lacrosse Rivalry, Therapy, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-21 09:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: The continuing college journeys of Bitty and Stiles (and Jack and Derek). This year featuring a new pack, a new team, a secret relationship, and possibly the biggest Haus mystery of all. Oh, and probably they play some hockey and lacrosse. And maybe even go to class.





	1. Fall Semester

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello, welcome back!
> 
> This is a sequel to ["Dudeliet and his Bromeo"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11733459/chapters/26437875) and won't make a lick of sense if you haven't read it.
> 
> This work covers only junior year, since _Check, Please!_ Year 4 has just started as of this writing. But it does cover _all_ of junior year, which means it starts _before_ the D &B epilogue, with no one knowing the things that are revealed there. It hews pretty closely to Year 3, with maybe a few minor variations around the timing of various events.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Lots of food, descriptions of a panic attack. Please let me know if I need to tag for anything else.
> 
> Huge thanks to [the_wordbutler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler) for her wonderful and speedy beta work, and for her general enthusiasm for this whole series.
> 
> As always, you can read _Check, Please!_ [here](http://checkpleasecomic.com/). _Teen Wolf_ is currently streaming on Amazon.

**August 2015**

The third step from the top of the stairs to the Haus attic creaks. Derek learns this the hard way.

The _instant_ the stair makes its noise, a hush falls over the attic. It's pulsing and guilty, like every time Stiles and Bitty clam up when Derek walks into a room, as if Stiles doesn't know damned well that Derek can hear every syllable of their conversations about his ass. But Derek heard voices. He _knows_ he did. At least two, female. Larissa and the volleyball team (the only female voices he hears around here on a regular basis) aren't back on campus yet. So... two or more unknown females in the Samwell Men's Hockey Haus attic. Not reassuring.

Derek braces, ready to leap into a fight. He turns the doorknob slowly and eases the door open inch by excruciating inch. The room is... silent. _Aggressively_ silent. A room in a decrepit old house, occupied year after year—by male college athletes, no less—should be teeming with small sounds. Derek finds the absence unnerving.

Derek shifts his eyes to catch whatever might be invisible to unaided sight. Mouse (definitely should've be able to hear that), used condom ( _ugh_ ), vague outline of Justin's preferred spot for curling up in the fetal position and whimpering, two ghosts—

_Oh. Ghosts._

"Hi," Derek says.

" _AAAAA!_ " one of the ghosts says.

Judging by their clothes, the two college-aged women in front of him died in the early '90s. They look fairly normal, and while Derek knows better than to trust appearances, he's guessing they're not into the haunting and scaring aspects of ghosthood.

The other ghost rolls her eyes. "Jenny, chill. He can't see us; he's not talking to us."

The shrieking ghost (Jenny, apparently) points a shaking spectral finger at Derek. "That dude's eyes," she says with great precision, "are glowing blue, Mandy. Pretty sure he can see us."

"Hi, ghosts," Derek says. He adds a little wave. He's glad Stiles isn't here, because he probably looks like a giant ass.

"Ohhh," Mandy says. And then, "Shit."

"How are you doing that?" Jenny demands.

Derek gestures at his face. "Werewolf eyes. Not just for scaring trick-or-treaters."

There's a little zooming sound, and suddenly, Derek's face-to-face with a pair of ghosts. "Werewolf? For real?" Jenny asks. "Those exist?"

The question startles Derek so much he rocks back an inch. "You've never met a werewolf?" That can't be right. They must've known Shitty, if no one else.

"Uh, I think we'd remember," Mandy snipes. Derek lets it drop.

Jenny and Mandy have _a lot_ of questions about werewolves. Derek settles on the floor, and the ghosts float half an inch above it. Derek answers some questions and refuses to answer others. Given how long it's probably been since they've talked to anyone but each other, the fact that the conversation is happening at all might make up for the brevity of his replies.

In return, Mandy and Jenny tell him about themselves. At _great_ length. They were sisters in one of Samwell's sororities ("Theta Alpha Theta, class of '95!" they chorus cheerfully). During Rush Week their junior year, something went wrong with a challenge, and one of the pledges was left behind in the house (not yet Haus), separated from the rest of the group. Jenny and Mandy stayed to help her, and the next thing they knew, they were ghosts.

"We don't know what happened," Mandy insists. "We don't remember being in danger, you know? Nothing that would get us _killed._ "

"After we died," Jenny says, "Theta Alpha Theta disbanded and they shut down the house, so we couldn't listen in on the gossip." She shrugs. "That's, like, probably why we're here, right? Unfinished business, unanswered questions, all that jazz."

While Derek's trying to formulate a response, his phone buzzes. He glances at it and finds one of Stiles' trademark _ruok?_ texts waiting for him. He sends back a capital _Y_ (which Stiles emphatically differentiates from a lowercase _y_ , which he insists can only mean "why") and is trying to return his phone to his pocket when it gets yanked out of his hand.

The ghosts can touch things. Good to know.

"Ohhh, your phone's _cute_ ," Jenny says. "It's like Justin's."

And that is how Derek spends ten minutes listening to two sorority ghosts wax romantic about Justin Oluransi, which, while Derek's not going to deny that Justin is a handsome man, wasn't how he'd been planning to spend his afternoon.

Eventually, he hears Stiles poking around at the bottom of the stairs. "Babe?" he calls. "You get lost up here? Derek? Seriously, is there, like, a passage to Narnia in Bitty and Lardo's bathroom?"

Derek looks at the ghosts. "May I?"

"Oh, who's that?" Jenny asks.

"Boyfriend."

They blink at him, looking startled. Derek remembers that they died in '93. Samwell's history as a queer-friendly place goes back to its founding (Jack was a history major; Derek learned things), but "queer-friendly" 22 years ago looked different than it does now.

"Attic," Derek calls.

Stiles makes his exceptionally graceful way up the stairs and looks around the room in confusion. "Hey, boo."

"Hey." Derek rests his hand on Stiles' ankle, the only part he can easily reach right now.

"Whatcha doing up here?" He looks at Derek and frowns. "What's with the eyes?"

Derek gestures at Stiles' own eyes. Stiles looks at him suspiciously, but his eyes glow orange, and Derek knows the exact moment he spots the ghosts because he jumps two inches backward and yelps, "Holy ghosts!"

Jenny and Mandy giggle. They introduce themselves, and Mandy asks, "Are you a werewolf, too?"

"Nope," Stiles says. "I'm a spark. It's a magic thing." He lets the orange fade from his eyes. It's harder for him to hold. He drops to the floor, leaning comfortably against Derek.

"Mandy and Jenny were telling me that they're not sure how they died," Derek says.

Derek has always been amazed by Stiles' mind. Even at the beginning, when they could barely stand each other, he'd been impressed by the way Stiles put pieces together, sometimes immediately, sometimes after weeks of relentless study, making connections the rest of them never considered. That skill has only sharpened over the years.

So Derek is grateful but unsurprised when Stiles leans forward, looking Mandy in the eye even though he can't see her anymore, and says, "I'm _really good_ at supernatural research. So if you want me to, like, look into it, see if I can find out what happened to you, say the word, and I am on it like werewolves on raw meat."

"Charming," Derek murmurs.

"Thanks," Jenny says. "But we're not sure we... want to know, you know?"

"Although..." Mandy bites her lip and exchanges a glance with Jenny, who nods. "Can you find out what happened to the pledge we were helping? We think she got out okay, because we've never seen her here. But we don't know for sure." She shrugs and looks surprisingly embarrassed for someone who's been dead for over twenty years. "We worry."

Stiles grins. "Say no more. Well, actually, yes, say more, because I need to know this girl's deets—woman's, I mean, she'll be, what, uh, forty now? Forty-one? But, uh. Yeah. Say no more about doing the thing, because I am doing the thing! I _will_ be doing the thing." He huffs, and his shoulders slump. "I should stop talking now."

Mandy and Jenny stare at him. And, yeah, Derek gets that Stiles' manner of communication isn't for everyone, but they don't need to look at him like he's some freak of nature. Then Jenny wails, "She's _forty-one_? Then we would be... forty- _two_? Oh my god, Mandy, we're _old_!"

"Being dead is the _worst_ ," Mandy grouses. "It's _impossible_ to track time around here."

Derek and Stiles share bemused glances. Spectral midlife crisis: not on the list of things Derek thought he'd have to deal with today.

Eventually, they get the ghosts settled enough to give them what little they remember about the pledge. ("Her name was Carrie." "Chrissy." "Maybe Cathy." "But she was definitely local." "Uh, she was from _Vermont_." "And she had this red hair _to die for_." "What are you _talking about_? She was _blonde_." Weirdly, Derek thinks that'll be enough for Stiles to go on.)

Stiles and Derek pick themselves up and are heading toward the stairs when Stiles says, "I mean, not that there's much for us to do. As predicted, Bitty did basically, like, _all_ of it himself. Don't even know why he wanted me here."

Derek raises an eyebrow.

Stiles waves his hands around. "Yeah, okay, we're friends and he wanted the company. But I worry. Of course I worry. He's basically been talking all afternoon, about everything except the thing he needs to talk about!"

Derek rolls his eyes. "You wanting him to talk about it is not the same as him needing to talk about it."

Stiles bares his teeth, which he can never know Derek finds adorable. Mandy says, "Oh, hey, Bitty? The blond who's always baking?"

Stiles goes tense. He shifts his eyes back (he calls it "spark vision," but... _no_ ) to see the ghosts again. "Yeah. That's him."

Mandy looks at Jenny, who gives an "all you, dude" shrug. "Just... look out for him, okay? He seems... tense."

Stiles blows out a hard breath. "That's Bitty for you. Most cheerfully overstressed dude you'll ever meet. But, yeah." He nods. "Me and Derek, we look after him pretty okay." He grins at Derek, who rolls his eyes and bumps his shoulder just hard enough to overbalance him, smirking at his yelp as he careens into the wall. "Asshole," Stiles grumbles as he rights himself, glaring over his shoulder at where Jenny and Mandy are doubled over laughing.

Derek knows better than to think that Stiles will let Eric's stress level go. Stiles may be an asshole to ninety percent of everyone, but to the other ten percent, the ones he considers _his_ , his loyalty is unwavering and his care sometimes overwhelming in its relentlessness. Eric's going to have to do some fancy verbal footwork if he wants to avoid telling Stiles about his relationship before he's ready.

In the meantime, Eric has the Haus almost ready for the new arrivals, and Derek and Stiles have met some supernatural beings who don't want to kill them. It's not what Derek would've anticipated for their first day back on campus for Stiles' junior year, but somehow, it doesn't surprise him.

 

**October 2015**

Jack can't decide if tonight's ref is oblivious or has it in for Samwell. The favoritism in the calls has been _blatant._ On the ice, Nursey yanks Dex aside and speaks low and fierce against his visor, hand gripping tight to the back of his sweater to keep him from going after the ref. "Shake it off, Will," Jack mutters, but fat chance of that.

From Derek's other side, Mason whistles. "Man, I'm still learning hockey, but I'm pretty sure that call sucked."

"That call sucked," Jack and Derek say.

Mason snorts. "Stiles warned me you two were basically the same person." Derek pokes Mason in the side or something, and Mason gasps a laugh, squirming away. "Shit, you are such a dick. You and Stiles totally deserve each other."

Jack takes minute to identify what he's feeling as he watches the interaction. It's... envy. Envy that Derek and Stiles can be so open about their relationship. Mason, too—he talks about Danny all the time, about how hard it is living a country apart now that Mason's at Samwell.

Jack wants that. He wants to be as openly proud of Bitty as Derek is of Stiles. When he's on the road, he wants to complain about the separation as much as Mason does. The secrecy's not forever—they have a coming-out plan, even—but he's not ready. He knows Bitty is okay with that; he isn't ready, either. But Jack still feels sometimes like he's letting them down. Like Bitty's going to decide he deserves better than having to hide and will tell Jack where to shove it.

Jack's allowed his contradictions. Even though the thought of coming out, of the world knowing one more thing that's "weird" about Jack Zimmermann, pushes "play" on a lot of bad old tapes in his head, he still wishes it were done, that he and Bitty were already out.

"Nurse, come _on_!" Jack shouts helplessly as Nursey slams into Colgate's #27. The guy checked Bitty hard early in the second—an illegal check that the ref did absolutely nothing about. Bitty skated through it (and, oh, how Jack had wanted to crow), but now the entire Samwell defensive line has it out for this guy. Jack appreciates their protectiveness (though Bitty, he suspects, _does not_ ), but it means they're not paying adequate attention to the rest of the Colgate side. Like #11, the guy blocking every damn move Whiskey's trying to make with the puck. The kid looks like he might cry, and he could use some damn backup.

"Hey," Derek says. Jack glances over, but Derek's gaze is fixed on the game. "How's everybody doing? Off-ice."

Jack laughs weakly. "You'd know better than I would. You and Stiles see them more often."

Derek makes a thoughtful noise. "We don't see as much of Eric anymore." He glances at Jack, and as Jack works through his guilt that he's costing Bitty time with his friends, he catches on the _intensity_ of Derek's gaze.

Stiles tried to teach Derek's SMH friends to "read the eyebrows." Jack thinks Stiles is ridiculous, but there may be something to it, because right now he would swear that Derek's eyebrows are saying _I want to help._ But why would Jack need Derek's help?

"Just..." Derek shakes his head and looks away. Jack feels like an actual, physical weight has lifted from his chest. "Make sure Eric's doing all right."

Jack almost snorts but catches it at the last second. He'll know if Bitty is doing all right, because Bitty won't be able to _not_ tell him. Sure, he can tamp it down and cover it with sunshine for a while, but in the end, the storm cloud always bursts, and Jack is so grateful that he's the one who gets to be there when it does. That Bitty trusts him enough to let him see that vulnerability and offer whatever comfort he needs. Of course, he can't tell Derek that, so he nods and tries to look suitably thoughtful. "Thanks, Derek. If I talk to him, I will."

 

**November 2015**

At the beginning of November, a pack of literally and metaphorically unstable werewolves start squatting in Jack's building. Jack and Bitty find out about the supernatural; Derek and Stiles find out about Jack and Bitty. The less said about that night, the better.

* * *

Stiles' first two years at Samwell, Derek had watched students flee campus like rats off a sinking ship as soon as the remotest possibility of a break appeared on the horizon. He'd assumed that the hockey team would be the same.

But he forgets: the average undergrad cannot cook worth a damn. Most of them have the skills, budget, and facilities for packets of ramen and microwave popcorn. If someone offers them an enormous Thanksgiving spread with a side of camaraderie, they will jump at it.

The day's running high with tensions. Nurse has taken issue with Mason and Dex's developing broship and is struggling with how to mention it without sounding like a jealous boyfriend (which would be awkward because Nurse and Dex aren't dating—yet).

Some people in the room know about Jack and Eric, but others don't. People keep starting to say something to them, or _about_ them, and then having to swallow it.

Justin is sulking because Alexei Mashkov couldn't come after all. March is also sulking, thinking her presence should more than make up for Mashkov's absence. Apparently their relationship hasn't progressed to Justin showing her his Tater Shrine.

The ghosts are giggling up a storm and offering running commentary on the proceedings. Derek's glad of his years of practice at not-smiling, otherwise he'd be having very inappropriate reactions to the dinner-table conversations. He can't even _look_ at Shitty, who's taken to the ghosts like lifelong friends, and who is sitting next to Larissa on the other side of the table making faces at them.

Only Eric seems to be in his element. Not only is he providing flawless hospitality and delicious food to upwards of twenty guests, but he's navigating the choppy waters of their interpersonal dramas, subtly heading off the worst collisions while acting like he doesn't realize they're happening. It takes a damned lot of skill to nudge Justin's attention back to March, subtly indicate that nothing romantic is happening between Dex and Mason without acknowledging why Nursey would care if there were, and make sure Jack knows he's loved without drawing attention to it, all while keeping glasses filled and dishes circulating. Not for the first time, Derek thinks Eric's kind of a marvel.

Derek's about to jump into a werewolf-hockey bro skirmish as Mason and Connor square off over the last corn muffin when Shitty sits bolt upright, nostrils flaring. A split second later, Derek smells it, too: another werewolf, up the block and closing fast.

Larissa puts her hand on Shitty's arm. "Shits? What's—" 

Shitty _growls_. It's a low rumble, half threatening and half threatened, like a wounded animal backed into corner. Derek's out of his chair in a flash. "Stiles," he calls, halfway to the front door. Shitty's a born werewolf and probably hasn't lost control of his shift since puberty, but Derek's been around enough out-of-control weres to recognize the signs.

Stiles jumps up, too, and starts calling out instructions in a relatively calm voice that nevertheless brooks no argument. "Lardo, Jack, Mason. Get Shitty into Lardo's room and _keep him there_ , no matter what happens down here." He gives Mason a hard stare, and Mason nods before getting up and helping Jack and Larissa wrangle and increasingly agitated Shitty toward the stairs. "Bitty, with us."

Derek bites down a grin. This asshole has no idea what's coming.

"Soup, Weasley, OtherDerek," Stiles says, "you're in charge here."

Nurse demands to know why he's "OtherDerek," and then the doorbell rings. Which, frankly, is better etiquette than Derek expected.

The instant Derek opens the front door and the three of them step onto the porch, the pieces fall into place. A scent so much like Shitty's. A similar face, easing into middle age, with flat brown eyes instead of Shitty's vibrant green. The tense way Shitty'd held himself, like he couldn't help straining toward the door, even as he desperately wanted to run away. This is almost certainly Shitty's father, and Derek's fingers itch to grab the door and slam it in his face.

But hospitality comes to Eric as easily as breathing. If he wouldn't let the Haus door slam in Kent Parson's face, he won't let it slam in this one. "Well, hello," he says in that _butter wouldn't melt_ tone. He even thickens his accent, because it makes people underestimate him. "Howc'n I help y'all?"

Failing to be charmed by Eric's wide smile and warm voice (cementing Derek's dislike of him), the guy says brusquely, "I'm here to see Buchanan Knight."

Derek catches the brief flare of surprise in Eric's expression and scent at the same time he's grabbing Stiles' wrist to forestall the rant he knows is building. Eric's face goes custard-smooth again, and he cocks his head like he's confused. "I'm sorry, sir," he says. "There's no one here by that name." Stiles has been giving Eric lessons in how to lie to werewolves. "There's a Knight on the soccer team, isn't there?"

Stiles' grin is dazzling. "I think so, bro. Hard to keep all those jocks straight."

Eric laughs delightedly. "You have never spoken truer words."

Stiles points to his right. "So, uh, yeah, soccer house is down there. End of the block and turn right. Three houses down on the right-hand side. Big white house with black shutters and a black front door, 'cause those bros don't do _anything_ subtly."

"Pots 'n' kettles, mister," Eric murmurs. Stiles high-fives him, and they turn toward the front door like they consider the conversation ended.

"We are not done here!" the man yells. Stiles and Eric pause but don't turn back. Derek waits, arms crossed. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"Well, now, I do not," Eric says amiably, still pointed mostly toward the door. "Because you walked up to my door and started making demands without even introducing yourself." He tsks sadly. "Some folks haven't got the manners God gave a cricket."

The man on the porch is crimson with rage. Derek slides out his claws, counting on the other were's heightened emotional state to keep him from hearing the quiet _snick_. "My name is Edison Buchanan," the man rails, "and I _demand_ to see my son!"

"Edison Buchanan," Stiles says slowly, trying the name out like a suspicious new dish in the dining hall.

"Yes," Edison Buchanan says tersely.

"And your son's name in Buchanan?" Eric asks. Derek bites his lip to keep from laughing. Stiles and Eric are like a soft-shoe vaudeville act, and this guy doesn't realize he's the straight man.

" _Yes_ ," he says, voice rising in stridency and pitch.

"Buchanan Buchanan," Stiles says.

" _No_ ," Edison Buchanan snarls. Derek gives him twenty seconds, tops, before his eyes flash.

"Now _I_ am a Junior," Eric says, putting a hand on his chest. "And I am proud to share my daddy's name. But I reckon I'd be mighty upset with him if he'd named me Bittle Bittle."

"Buchanan _Knight_ ," Edison Buchanan snaps. "His name is Buchanan _Knight_ , of the Boston Knights, and I _demand_ that you bring him to me at once!"

"You have _no right_ to be making demands here," Stiles fires back.

"Oh, I think you'll find that I _do_!" Edison Buchanan lets the beta shift take over as he lunges at Stiles and Eric with eyes, claws, and fangs.

Stiles has too much training and experience to so much as flinch. Eric jerks back out of instinct, but he stands his ground. And when Edison Buchanan pulls back, eyes still glowing gold, expression bewildered, Eric sighs. "Didn't even send the alpha. How rude."

Stiles shakes his head. "The Buchanan pack hasn't had a male alpha in, what, two hundred years?"

"At least," Derek confirms. He lowers his arms and takes a half-step forward. "Very committed to the old ways."

Edison Buchanan's advantage is briefly deflated by their refusal to be cowed. He recovers almost instantly and puts his armor back in place, straightening his tie and smoothing his hair in a way that reminds Derek of the way Shitty used to smooth his flow. "You'll hear from my alpha," Edison Buchanan says, words clipped and tone severe.

"And you'll hear from his," Stiles bluffs, dropping the pretense that they don't know who he's talking about.

Edison Buchanan sniffs. "Buchanan is omega," he says. "We would know if he'd accepted another alpha."

"You sure about that?" Stiles asks, solely for the purpose of being a shit.

But then.

Derek will _never_ forget what it felt like, becoming an alpha. Peter's blood cooling under his claws, power surging through his veins, too fast, too hard, _too much_ , burning in his fingers, pounding in his skull, until he felt like only a howl loud enough to shake down the forest could bleed the excess. A sense of bitter vindication against everyone, especially Peter, who'd said he could never be alpha.

For the month after, he'd been drunk on his new power and consumed by a relentless drive to build his pack at any cost. He barely remembers turning Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, beyond an utter (and utterly wrong) conviction that if he didn't have betas _this instant_ , he would die. And he still burns with shame when he thinks about how he treated Scott and Stiles in those days.

This feeling? This is nothing like that. This is more rising tide than rushing tsunami. More urge to protect who and what are already his than to expand. It's a gentle prickling in his fingertips and a low murmur in the back of his mind.

But it's similar enough that he knows what's happened even before he hears Stiles' quietly shocked, "Oh, dude, what the fuck?" and Eric's quietly terrified, "What happened?"

Derek flashes his eyes at Edison Buchanan—just once, so the guy knows he's not dicking around. He remembers the endless posturing of his first stint as alpha, the constant need to prove he'd mastered a power he did not, in the hidden corners of his mind, believe he deserved.

He also, although he would rather have died than admit it at the time, remembers being thrilled by the way Stiles' scent would cycle through fear, lust, and frustration every time Derek flashed red eyes at him, as if he were equal parts terrified and turned on by Derek's displays of power and equally mad at himself for both reactions.

Now he gets it: he _has_ the alpha power. He doesn't need to show off for anyone. He smiles—not a threatening smile, he doesn't think, just a smile because the world is amazing and ridiculous. "You were saying?" he asks.

If Edison Buchanan takes one more step backward, he's going to fall down the steps, and he doesn't seem to realize it. Derek reaches out and takes him gently by the arm, drawing him back onto stable ground. (Well, stable _ish_ —he wouldn't stake his life on the structural integrity of any part of the Haus.) Edison lurches upright and yanks his arm out of Derek's grip, but he manages to stay on the porch. "When you see Buchanan, tell him he _will_ hear from us," he says, but he's running on pure bluster now, and they all know it.

"If we see him," Derek says mildly.

"And please give Alpha Buchanan regards from Alpha Hale. He and his emissary will pay her a call once we're more settled," Stiles adds.

Edison Buchanan straight-up blanches. "Hale?" he asks, and even his bluster is mostly gone.

"Yup!" Stiles says brightly, rocking on the balls of his feet.

"If you'd done introductions like a _proper_ person," Eric mutters under his breath. Derek grins and reaches over without thinking, squeezing the back of Eric's neck. Eric smiles up at him, but Stiles' quiet wheezing noise is either stifled laughter or an imminent panic attack. Either way, it's time to get everyone back in the house. He's itching to check on Shitty, anyway.

Derek puts a hand on Stiles' shoulder and the other on Eric's, turning them toward the door. "Mr. Buchanan," he murmurs with a brief dip of his head. He waits for Eric to open the door and ushers them inside, not waiting to see if Edison Buchanan leaves.

The instant the door closes, Derek can no longer hear _anything_ outside. Stiles must have put up a dampening spell to keep the guests from hearing what was happening on the porch. A tense anticipation is coming from the dining room, and every head swivels toward them when they walk into the room.

 

There is also, Derek notes in passing, a lot less food than when they went outside. Even unexpected and ill-defined upheaval can't keep college students' stomachs down for long.

"Is everything okay, Bitty?" Chris asks, half out of his seat before Eric's across the threshold.

Eric smiles and pats Chris' shoulder as he walks without hesitation toward the stairs. "Everything's fine, Chowder, thank you for asking. Y'all doing all right? Anyone need anything?"

"Bitty," Stiles murmurs. Eric laughs quietly and waves a hand at the table in a weak retraction of his offer.

Derek has no idea what to expect when Eric opens Larissa's door, but he's not surprised when a nearly naked Shitty (are his boxer shorts covered in tiny gavels?) leaps off Larissa's bed and flings himself into Derek's arms while yelling, "ALPHA FUCKING HALE, MOTHERFUCKER!"

Derek gives Stiles a bemused look over Shitty's shoulder and then raises his arms to return the hug. Stubble rasps against the side of his neck, and he freezes as he realizes Shitty is scent-marking him. And crying on him 

"Shits," Derek says quietly. 

Shitty pulls back, wiping his eyes unabashedly. "Sorry, bro, sorry," he says. "Wolfy instincts don't trump bodily consent, right?" 

The moment feels fragile and unsettled, and Derek once again thanks his stars for Stiles, who jumps in with an easy, "I am so pissed at you, bro. We could've been calling you 'Bucky' all this time, and you didn't say?" 

Shitty flips him off with both hands. "Try it and see how it goes for you, _Mitch_." 

Stiles laughs in startled delight, and the tension eases. "No, but, seriously, what is with the names in your family?" 

Shitty flops back onto the bed at Larissa's side and rolls his eyes dramatically. "It's what happens when werewolf matrilineal naming conventions runs smack against New England patriarchal fragility," he says. Derek raises an eyebrow at him. So do Larissa and Stiles. Shitty huffs. "Jerome Edison—yes, a distant relation of _that_ Edison, who was, yes, as big an asshole as everyone thinks—marries Augusta Buchanan and becomes Jerome Buchanan. But God forbid his precious man-name be lost to the sands of time—" Jack mouths _precious man-name_ , and Derek can't find it within himself to scowl. "—so he names his first son Edison. Eventually, Edison Buchanan marries Connie Knight, becomes Edison Knight, and carries on his crappy-ass tradition by naming his first—and only!—son Buchanan Knight. Then Connie Knight wisely divorces his lying criminal ass when the SEC comes after him, and he goes back to being Edison Buchanan." He grins sharply and sketches a sloppy bow. "The end." 

There's a brief but deep silence. Then Mason mutters, " _Damn_ ," and Derek feels he speaks for all of them. 

Shitty pushes to his feet and regards Derek calmly. Holding Derek's gaze, he tilts his head to the side. "I'd like to be the first to ask to be your beta." He grins shyly. "If you'll have me." 

Something tingles under Derek's skin. A sense of _rightness_ , a quiet, _yes, of course it has to be this way_. Peter's snide voice at the back of his head that tells him he doesn't deserve this, and he acknowledges that voice and then tells it to take a hike as he yanks Shitty back into his hold and sets his fangs lightly against Shitty's neck, barely breaking the skin. A claiming bite. "I would be honored," he whispers, and then braces for the rush of strength as Shitty's power adds to his, to the _pack's_. 

Derek has no idea how long they stand there, but when they pull apart, Stiles and Eric are sniffling, and even Jack looks marginally less stoic. As soon as Shitty steps back, Larissa steps forward. "So, I know a thing or two about your pack in Cali," she says, "so I know you're cool with non-wolves in the fold." She shrugs. "I'm in, if you're interested." 

Interested? Try _staggered_. The _bà mụ_ tend to be solitary. For Larissa to voluntarily join a werewolf pack speaks volumes about her commitment to at least one of the werewolves involved. Derek glances at Shitty, whose face has split into a broad grin, and really there was only one answer. He grabs Larissa in a tight hug and imitates the claiming bite against her neck. "I would be honored." 

Stiles beams and bounds forward, squeezing Derek's shoulder. "Man, look at that! Two new betas and an emissary, and you haven't even been alpha for ten minutes." 

Derek whirls. "You're Scott's emissary." His mother would rise from her grave and smack him if she knew he'd so much as _thought_ of poaching another alpha's emissary, even accidentally. 

Stiles rolls his eyes. "And I promise that you, Scott, Danny, and I will sit down and have a long and probably painful conversation about transfer of duties and powers. And then _I_ will sit down on the Nemeton and have a longer, painfuller conversation about the future of our arrangement. But if you think for one _second_ that I'm not going to be your emissary, then those new alpha powers have scrambled your brains." 

"Lou," Derek says, more because he feels like he ought to than because he wants to, but Stiles is shaking his head anyway. 

"Is perfectly happy with their Pagan werewolf pack—see, Bitty, it happens." Stiles pulls out his phone and types rapidly. "But thanks for reminding me that we need to call them." He glances up, sees Derek staring at him, and puts his phone away, grabbing Derek's hands. Derek swallows hard and holds on tight. "I get that you're freaking out, okay? And I get that there's a way things are done in polite werewolf society. But there's tradition, and there's reality. You're a brand new alpha, and your partner is a spark. No one's going to accuse you of poaching if I say that once I get shit sorted with Scott, I really, _really_ want to be your emissary." 

Derek takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Werewolf culture and practice issues are seldom as simple as Stiles makes them out to be. But they're also seldom as complicated as Derek builds them up to be in his head. Maybe, somewhere in the middle, they'll figure out how to be okay. Derek shrugs. Over the years, he's learned to recognize an unwinnable argument when he sees one. "In that case, Emissary Stilinski," he says, "I would be honored." 

"Awesome. Great." Stiles swoops forward and plants a fast kiss on Derek's lips. "Glad we got that sorted out. Now—" 

At his elbow, Derek feels a nervous, humming hesitance. He glances over and isn't surprised to see Mason hovering at his side. "Uh, Derek, I—" 

Derek frees his hands and sets them on Mason's shoulders. "You don't have to decide anything yet." 

Mason licks his lips. "I—" 

Derek shakes his head. "I mean it. You and Scott have your differences, but he's your alpha. Changing packs can be hard to do and harder to undo. Plus—" He glances at Stiles, who shrugs. "If Danny's going to be Scott's emissary, you being my beta might make things rough for you." 

Mason looks away, but Derek hears, "When _aren't_ things rough for us?" loud and clear. Derek winces. Mason swears he and Danny are on the long road together, but apparently the road is under construction. 

"We're not saying to make your decisions based on him, dude," Stiles adds from where he's now slouching against Lardo's bed frame. Shitty has his head in Lardo's lap and his foot dangling over the edge of the bed; Stiles has one hand wrapped around Shitty's ankle and the other scrolling across his phone screen. "Just… talk about the situation." He grins and waves his phone. "Check the weather, you know?" 

Mason squares his shoulders and looks at Derek with an expression that's half defiance, half resignation. "I get it," he says. 

Derek realizes that he _doesn't_ get it, so he squeezes Mason's shoulders and says, "After you talk to Scott and Danny, if you want to join this pack, we'll be honored to have you. In the meantime, we can offer you alliance. It's an... adjunct membership that allows us to protect you against threats without fully tying you to the pack." 

The tension leaches out of Mason's shoulders and jaw, and he offers Derek a genuine smile. "Thanks, man," he says quietly. Derek squeezes his shoulders once and then lets go. "I accept alliance with this pack." 

"Woo!" Shitty cheers, throwing his hands in the air and almost whacking Lardo's chin. "Today has been fucking exhausting, m'dudes. Who wants to see if those jackals left any pie?" 

Lardo shrugs and stretches, laughing softly when her shirt rides up and Shitty nuzzles his face against the strip of skin it bares. "Dunno, man," she says. "I kinda want to smoke a bowl first." 

Eric puts his hands on his hips and stares at her. "I try not to ask for much," he says tartly, "but I know how much y'all eat under normal circumstances. I would prefer you not attack my beautiful Hausgiving dinner while stoned." 

Lardo shrugs and slips out from under Shitty. "I mean, okay, bro. Just don't come crying to us about how many leftovers you have to find fridge space for." 

"Ms. Duan," Eric says, rolling his eyes, "I am feeding hockey players and werewolves. When have I _ever_ complained about that?" 

There's a lot of laughing and chattering as they head toward the door. For a minute, Derek allows himself to think that, this time, his transition to alpha will be as painless as possible. 

Eric's hovering at his elbow, and Derek gives him what's supposed to be a reassuring smile but could probably use work. Erica and Isaac have told him repeatedly that his attempts at comforting people are more distressing than whatever they were upset about in the first place. 

Eric flashes a quick, tight smile in return and asks, "What about us?" 

"What about you?" he asks. 

Eric shrugs and looks at Jack. "We aren't werewolves, or sparks, or… or anythings. We're a couple normal humans who were in the wrong place at the wrong time." He's wringing his hands, Derek notices, like he's honestly expecting Derek to tell them to take a hike. Like he doesn't know that he's been the heart of this pack since before it _was_ a pack. 

Derek rests a hand on Eric's shoulder. "Almost every pack I've ever known has had humans," he says. "And I'd be honored to have you both in ours." 

Jack and Eric exchange a look that Derek can't decipher. Eric smiles again, more confidently. "Thank you, hon," he says. He lifts his eyebrows at Jack, who presses his lips together and doesn't say a word.

In fact, Derek realizes, Jack hasn't said a word this whole time. Derek looks helplessly at Stiles, who swoops in, words blazing, before Derek's worry can think of becoming panic. "Of course," Stiles says, "you don't have to commit right now. You're also allied to the pack, because of how much time you spend with us. And that's totally cool. You can keep on like that as long as you want. Forever! That's fine. We would never, like, _force_ you to join." 

Jack's shoulders relax. He and Eric share another look, and he nods. "Thank you, Stiles," Jack says. 

Stiles squeezes Eric's shoulder as he and Jack walk out of the room, leaving Derek and Stiles alone for the first time since the alpha powers rushed back into him. Stiles crowds in close and raises his hands to cradle Derek's jaw. "You holding up okay? 

The automatic _Everything's fine_ jumps to Derek's lips, but he forces it back, forces himself to check in with how he's feeling. He nods slowly. "I—it's weird. Not like before, when I felt... overwhelmed with the power."

"Doesn't hurt to have a pack within two minutes of getting alpha powers." 

Derek chuckles. "But it's racing through me. Has been the whole time." 

Stiles puts a hand on Derek's arm, and it's almost too much. Derek rumbles, low in his chest. "You need your pack?" Stiles asks. "They're right downstairs." 

Derek thinks about that, too. And the thing is, he _does_. Needs them close, needs them safe, needs them giving each other strength. But more than that he needs—"I need to move," he says abruptly. 

Stiles nods. "Well, I don't think you're getting these guys away from pie and football anytime soon. What say we head up to Morris Park and you can put on your wolfy skin and test drive the new upgrade?" 

Derek rolls his eyes, but, phrasing aside, that sounds great. 

Only then Stiles slides his hand all the way up Derek's arm and rests it against the side of his neck, his index finger brushing Derek's cheek. Derek's breath rushes in, and everywhere is _Stiles_ —his scent, his heartbeat, the heat of his skin. Derek growls and grabs Stiles around the waist, yanking him in close. He buries his face in the crook of Stiles' neck and breathes him in deep. It's not enough; Derek wants to strip him naked and chase that scent across every pale inch of him, wants to find out what he can know that he never has before. 

" _Derek_ ," Stiles groans. 

Derek's fangs descend, and he nips at the sensitive spot at the hinge of Stiles' jaw, feeling the shudder run through him. 

"Orrrr, we could go home and you can work out that restless energy some other way," Stiles suggests. 

" _Yes_ ," Derek says. 

Stiles laughs and tries to push out of Derek's hold. "Hey, buddy, unless you want to do this right here in Lardo's room—" 

He kind of does. Lardo's room feels safe now in a whole new way. Feels like _pack_. He can't think of anything better than filling it with the scent of derekstilessex. He grins and reaches for the button of Stiles' pants. 

"Whoakay, my friend, if that's what you want, but _you_ get to explain to Lardo why we banged in her room without asking permission first." 

That brings Derek up short. Like all reasonable sentient beings, he has a deep and abiding fear of Larissa Duan. The fact that he's her alpha now doesn't change that a whit. Reluctantly, he pulls his face out of Stiles' neck and releases his hold around Stiles' waist. Stiles immediately laces their fingers together, and Derek smiles his thanks. 

Derek thinks Stiles is probably going for sheepish, not horny, in saying their goodbyes. He doesn't hit the right tone, given that Shitty takes one look at them and yells, "Get it, Stilinski!" Or maybe the arousal rolling off both of them is that strong. 

Eric raises an eyebrow at Stiles, who shrugs, looking genuinely sheepish now. "We're heading out." 

"No guarantees I can save you any pie," he says, though Derek figures he's had a couple pieces—if not a whole pie—set aside for Stiles and Derek from the beginning. 

"We're good, Bitty, honest," Stiles says. "We just remembered something we need to take care of at home." 

"Aww, yeah," Lardo says. She holds out her hand for a fist bump. Derek glares, and she pulls her fist back, grinning. 

"We'll see you later?" Stiles says with pointed glances at Shitty and Mason. They'll understand in how important pack time will be for the next couple weeks. They'll get the others onboard. 

Shitty salutes. "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" 

Derek growls, and Stiles shoves him toward the door. "It's a figure of speech, jackass. Go on, fuzzbutt. _Git_." Stiles hustles him out of the room and out the door of the Haus with a wave over his shoulders and a hasty, "Thanks for having us!" 

Someone probably makes a raunchy joke about that as they leave, but Derek can't hear it past the pounding of his heart in time with Stiles' and the call of the moon singing through him. If Stiles were a shifter, they'd go to the park anyway, run until one of them caught the other and fuck right there on the ground. But because Derek is a considerate boyfriend, he'll let Stiles take him home to their warm, soft bed. Maybe he'll be able to talk Stiles into a run _after_ sex. Then at some point tonight, his pack will come over, and he'll have them all in his sight, where he can keep an eye on them, keep them safe. This time, things will work out right. 

*

Lou Pollack lives in a funeral home. This is not an ironic, hipster housing choice; Lou is a licensed funeral director, albeit one who doesn't embalm and whose display room is filled with coffins made out of seagrass and wicker. Derek will never be entirely comfortable walking into _any_ funeral home, too sensitive to the undercurrents of this much death, but those energies here are the closest to content he's ever experienced. 

"So," Lou says, squinting at Derek and Stiles through thick glasses, "you're an alpha again. Mazel tov." 

Derek rolls his eyes as Stiles beams. "Thanks," Derek says gruffly. 

"Now," Stiles says, "how soon can I go back to Beacon Hills and punch Deaton's lying face in for the way he played Scottie? One True Alpha a century my pale ass." 

" _Hey_." Lou's gaze sharpens, and Derek takes a half-step back. They hide a lot behind the coke-bottle lenses and what they refer to as "late '90s dyke aesthetic," but Lou is Stiles' mentor and a _plenty_ powerful witch, and the inoffensive façade makes these occasional displays of authority hit that much harder. "Alan and I have our disagreements about his methods—" Derek's heard those disagreements. People in _Guam_ have heard those disagreements. "—but _never_ act like what Scott accomplished isn't amazing. A bitten beta becoming an alpha through sheer force of will? That hardly ever happens, and Scott's to be commended for it." 

Lou cocks their head and looks at Derek. "What happened to you is no less amazing but slightly more common. Here." They take a glass tumbler and a pitcher of water from the credenza behind their desk. "Alpha power versus beta power is a difference of degree, not kind. You know that, right?" 

Derek scoffs. "Obviously." 

"Don't roll your eyes at me, young man," Lou says. "You'd be amazed how many weres, even born ones, don't know jack about how it works." They point at the cup. "So this empty cup we're gonna call your baseline. It's how much power—how much _werewolfiness,_ to use one of Stiles' terms—you were born with. Then you kill your asshole uncle—thanks for that, by the way; you don't know the fits we had over the idea of Alpha Peter Hale—and get his alpha power." Lou pours water into the tumbler. "There's you as an alpha the first time around." Derek swallows. He doesn't like to think about that time. "Then—and here's when we knew you were one to keep an eye on—you gave up your alpha status to save your sister." The water goes from the tumbler back into the pitcher, and Lou holds the empty cup out to Derek. "What do you notice?" 

Derek stares at it, but it looks the same as it did before: an empty cut-glass tumbler with a fish pattern around the side. It's Stiles who says quietly, "Water droplets." Derek blinks. He'd _seen_ them, but they hadn't registered as worth _noticing_. Which is why Stiles is the emissary. 

Lou nods and sets the tumbler back on the desk. "Once you've been an alpha, if you lose that power, you don't lose it _entirely_. There's always a little extra juice in you—not enough to still _be_ an alpha, obviously. But enough to make it easier to _become_ one again if circumstances align." 

Derek frowns. "And circumstances aligned?" 

Lou nods. "Come with me." 

Lou leads them out of the office and toward the smaller of the two vigil rooms off the main lobby. There's a coffin at the front of the room (hemp, maybe), but as far as Derek can see, there are only four mourners. Once they're in the room, he realizes it's the members of Lou's small pack—three werewolves, Lou, and Lou's spouse Lee, also a witch. Lee has a ball of blue-brown-green variegated yarn in their lap, the dim overhead lights flashing rapidly off a crochet hook as a hat appears like magic (maybe _actual_ magic) under their hands. 

As Lou leads Stiles and Derek toward the coffin, they rest a hand on Lee's shoulder. "Head!" Lee snaps. 

" _Company,_ " Lou protests. 

"Yes, yes," Lee says. "Hello, Derek. Hello, Stiles. Give me your head." 

With a long-suffering huff, Lou lowers their head. It's not a long journey; Lou barely comes up to Derek's shoulders. Lee wraps the hat around Lou's head, grumbles something about "enormous, stubborn heads," and releases Lou with a peck of a kiss that seems almost angry. 

Lou grins and continues on. Stiles elbows Derek in the ribs. "That's us in seventy-five years." 

"You're not too big to put over my knee, young man," Lou says tartly. They reach the coffin and wait for Derek and Stiles to catch up. The look on their face changes from fondly amused to reverent as they gesture toward the body in the coffin. "Derek, Stiles, meet Clary Hawes, late alpha of the Hawes pack, now dissolved." 

Clary Hawes must have been pushing 90. She's a small, wizened white woman with a few tufts of fine white hair on her head, but even in death she looks fierce, not someone to be trifled with. She's wrapped in a cream-colored muslin shroud with a woven chain of wolfsbane flowers coiled on top of it. Stitched into the shroud at about heart level is a red lemniscate inside a circle, which must've been the Hawes pack symbol. Derek swallows hard at the sight of a symbol of infinity representing a pack that no longer exists. 

"She died the day before Thanksgiving," Lou says softly. "That tally right?" 

Derek nods, not trusting his voice. 

"It was always a small pack," Lou continues. "Never interested in expanding. Clary and her husband Dale had three sons, who went to their wives' packs when they got married. And then a 'bonus kid' ten years after the last son—a daughter who never cared a whit about being an alpha. She joined her wife's pack, too. When Dale died four years ago, Clary got the kids and grandkids together and said that, unless someone wanted the alpha power, she was going to formally dissolve the pack and let the power go when she died." Lou shakes their head. "No one wanted it, so here we are." 

A hundred questions clog in Derek's throat. The one that makes it out is, "Why me?" 

Lou smiles in a soft way that reminds Derek fiercely of his dad. "Because at the moment it came free, dear, you were the one who needed it most." 

Derek's breath catches. The idea that this bundle of alpha powers, this magic that both is and is not sentient (thaumaturgical philosophy makes his head hurt), would choose him, would look at all the werewolves in the area and decide to throw in its lot with _him_ — He's vaguely aware of Lou moving off, of Stiles making some paltry excuse to go as well, giving Derek his space, leaving him alone with the body of Clary Hawes. Derek swallows past the lump in his throat and lays his hand over the careful stitching on the shroud. 

"Alpha Hawes," he says, "my name is Derek Hale, and I, uh… I guess I have your alpha powers now." His mouth twists; it's half-smile, half-grimace, because he doesn't know what he's feeling right now. "My pack—I think you'd like us. We're small and unconventional, but, uh. We're stubborn. Fighters. I want them to be safe and happy." Then, mindful of something every one of his therapists—and Stiles—has said, he takes a deep breath and adds, "I want _us_ to be safe and happy." He smiles weakly. "I promise to be a better alpha this time than I was last time." 

He thinks for a minute, but there's nothing else he wants to say. He pats Alpha Hawes' chest—probably awkwardly, but who's watching?—and turns back toward the room. 

He chokes on a laugh when he sees that Stiles has been commandeered into service as Lee's yarn-holder. He sits very still in his chair, yarn wrapped several times around his hands, while Lee yanks it angrily onto their hook. 

As Derek makes his way over, Lou taps Lee's shoulder and says, "I need him back, sweets." Lee grumbles, and Lou gestures for Nicky, one of the werewolves in their pack, to take over for Stiles. The last thing Derek hears before leaving the room is Lee sharply telling Nicky, "Claws in," as though scolding a naughty cat. 

The three of them return to the office. Lou flips through the ancient Rolodex on the desk—an actual, physical Rolodex complete with hundreds of little white cards. Their hand flashes with a pale yellow light, and the usual ozone scent of magic puffs into the air. Then Lou is holding four cards out to Derek. "Alpha Hawes' children will be here tomorrow for the funeral. You're welcome to come, of course. But if you're not ready, now you have their contacts for later. Name, pack, territory, alpha's name." 

"Thank you," Derek says sincerely. 

"Hey," Stiles says with a nonchalance that fools no one, "did you do Mandy and Jenny's funerals? The Samwell sorority girls who died?" 

Lou snorts. "Stiles, I know you think I'm as old as the bedrock, but in the fall of '93, I was in _eighth grade_." 

Stiles subsides, a faint hint of embarrassment in his scent. "Oh." 

Lou winks. "My predecessor did, though." 

Stiles does a victory shimmy and makes grabby hands at his mentor. "Gimme!" 

Lou shakes their head and moves behind the desk. "Yes, yes, ridiculous man-child. What are you looking for, exactly?" 

"The pledge they were helping when they died?" 

Lou's face looks pained for a second. Then they nod and turn back to the Rolodex. They repeat the magic from before but hold the card out of Stiles' reach. "Don't do anything you'll regret later. Don't do anything _I'll_ regret later." 

Stiles keeps making grabby hands, so Derek's the one who says, "I'll keep an eye on him" and takes the card. "Christine Biel," he reads, grimacing slightly at Stiles. "Last known address in New Hampshire." 

"Probably a brunette," Stiles murmurs, and Derek snorts. 

Derek's phone buzzes, and he pulls it from his pocket to find a text from Shitty. At Stiles' questioning look, he says, "Shitty's having a pack emergency." 

Lou raises an eyebrow. Stiles grins. "Code for 'naked in your bed waiting for Alpha cuddles.'" 

Lou guffaws. "Your lives are so _interesting_." 

"Says the undertaker spark," Stiles scoffs, leaning across the desk for a hug. Lou squeezes Derek's hands, wishes them well, and shoos them out the door. 

Despite Stiles' vehement protests, Derek keeps Christine Biel's card with the cards for Alpha Hawes' family. "Only until I'm sure you won't be reckless," he tells Stiles as they walk to the car. Stiles sulks, but he doesn't deny the possibility. Derek sighs as he points the Toyota toward Samwell. Given a choice between a reckless boyfriend and a naked beta, the naked beta doesn't sound so bad. 

* * *

Running into someone you know outside your therapist's office is _the most awkward_. Are you going to acknowledge each other or act like strangers? And what if you each intend something different and someone misreads the signals—like when you go in for a hug but the other guy wants a handshake. 

But then Derek pulls his hand out of his jacket pocket and gives Jack a small wave and a short nod as they approach each other across the parking lot. 

Jack comes and goes by the back door; it's supposed to be staff only, but no one seems to mind. He checks in via an email he sends from his phone and waits for Isabelle next to a tall potted plant that blocks the view of anyone looking that way from the lobby. Maybe that's paranoid, but the last thing he needs is someone taking a picture of him checking in for an appointment—or, worse, coming _out_ of an emotionally draining appointment where tears may or may not have been involved—and selling the tabloids the story that Jack Zimmermann is breaking down again. 

For one brief moment, Jack entertains the idea that Derek wasn't here for therapy. But there's only one other business in the building and, as eclectic as Derek's tastes in books and music are, a goddess-inspired womynist art collective doesn't seem up his alley. Jack thinks about the fact that he hadn't noticed Derek's car in the parking lot. He wonders if he would have; Derek drives a very unobtrusive Toyota. _Then_ he thinks about the fact that the office is halfway between Samwell and Providence, and that it's entirely possible that Derek _ran here_. 

When they meet halfway across the parking lot, Derek pulls Jack into a rough hug. Jack wonders how he ever imagined that an alpha werewolf would let a member of his pack, even an "adjacent" one, as Stiles calls Jack and Bitty, go unacknowledged. He lets Derek run a hand down the back of his head and neck and wraps his arms tightly around Derek's back, realizing as his body relaxes that he probably needed the contact as much as Derek did. 

When they step out of the hug, there's a moment of awkward uncertainty. Their friendship is mostly based on shared silences and succinct text conversations. But this seems like the kind of thing that should be marked with words of some sort, shouldn't it? 

But maybe not, because Derek takes another half-step back and says, "I'm going to that coffee shop on 6th." 

It takes so long for Jack to register that as an invitation to join him that Derek has half turned away before Jack blurts, "I'll be there in an hour." 

Derek gives a little smile and nod and starts to turn away again. Then he pauses and spends a second looking deeply conflicted about whatever he's about to say. "Your therapist," he starts, and then pauses again, looking off to the side like he's writing and rejecting versions of whatever comes next. "Everyone in the practice is either supernatural or supernatural-aware." With that bombshell dropped, Derek ambles across the parking lot toward the coffee shop. 

Jack has a list of possible discussion topics for today's session. Whether his SAD seems different in his first winter in the NHL and a long-term relationship. How his and Bitty's slow creep out of the closet is going. His usual winter anxiety about being an interfaith kid straddling two religions and not feeling connected to either of their holidays. 

But it's been a month since the supernatural came literally crashing into Jack's life, and two weeks since he and Bitty sort of fell into a werewolf pack. So instead of the things he's been planning to talk about, he faces Isabelle across her French provincial coffee table and says, "Euh, I have a friend who's a patient of Jason's, I think. He told me that you know. Um. About the supernatural." His pulse thunders in his ears, and his face is probably redder than Dex's hair, but he counts his breaths and doesn't take it back. 

He glances at Isabelle, and the complete blankness of her face is the biggest tell she could possibly have given. She has an expressive face and has never tried to hide her emotions and reactions from him. But Jack gets it. A lot of people's safety rides on keeping this knowledge out of the wrong hands. 

"I'm asking because," Jack plunges on, "this friend is an alpha werewolf, and Bittle and I are—uh, we're part of his pack. I guess." 

There's a brief flicker of surprise in Isabelle's expression, followed quickly by delight. She clicks her pen and says, with a flash of the bone-dry humor that's been putting Jack at ease since their first session, "And how does that make you feel?" 

* 

**December 2015**

 "Eric!"

" _Tabarnak_." Jack drops the spoon into the pot of rice and sprints across the kitchen, skidding into the living room and behind the couch in time to see his father waving the empty cookie plate at Jack's laptop, which he'd been _sure_ he'd put away. 

"—wrong with the cookies, Mr. Zimmermann?" Bitty is asking. His voice is somewhat distorted through the laptop speakers, but it's still the dearest, most familiar voice in Jack's world. 

"Eric! There's no need to be so formal," Papa says. "Call me 'Mr. Jack's Dad.'" 

"Oh, lord," Bitty mutters.

"The problem with the cookies," Papa continues, "is that they are _gone_." 

Bitty raises his eyebrows, and Jack gives him an apologetic grimace. Two dozen dreidel-shaped cardamom cookies came to Montreal with Jack—and he's been here for less than 36 hours. 

"I could make more?" Bitty offers tentatively, either missing or ignoring Jack frantically shaking his head. 

"Yes, you could," Papa says. 

"Papa, be nice," Jack chides. 

"I am," Papa insists. "I'm complimenting the man's baking. That's nice, isn't it?" 

"It's very nice, Mr. Zimmermann." 

"See, Jack? Eric thinks I'm nice." 

"Only because he doesn't know you're a giant troll." 

On the screen, Bitty laughs. 

"Now, Eric, for the next batch, I'm thinking—" 

"Oh, Papa, I hear Maman calling you." Jack pairs his words with a little shove at his father's shoulders, encouraging him off the couch. 

Papa looks up instantly. Close to thirty years together have done nothing to dull his desire to be near Maman at the slightest provocation. Jack smiles as he thinks, _That'll be us someday_. 

"I don't hear that," Papa says. "Well, I'd better see what she needs." Papa stands and waves absently at the laptop. "Good night, Eric," he calls as he goes. "Think about those cookies." 

" _Chag sameach_ , Mr. Zimmermann," Bitty calls, and Jack's glad Papa's mostly out of the room, because those words in Bitty's accent are too adorable for him to have let pass unremarked. 

Bitty smirks as Jack comes around the couch and sits. "Hey, bud," Jack says, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Sorry about that." 

"Jack Zimmermann," Bitty says, eyes twinkling, "is your father _drunk_?"

Jack laughs. "No, you have witnessed the rare Chanukah miracle that is Bad Bob Zimmermann on an extreme sugar high."

Bitty lets loose an ugly giggle-snort. All Jack can think is how unfair it is that they aren't together, that he can't take Bitty in his arms and find out what that sound tastes like, what others he could coax out after it with lips and tongue. 

"Did he eat _all_ the cookies?" Bitty says, scandalized. 

"No, no, no, Maman and I had a half dozen." Jack waits a half-beat and adds, "Combined." 

"Oh my _god_!" Bitty gasps, rocking with laughter again.

" _Please_ don't send more this year." 

"You seem awful sure I'm making any next year, Mr. Zimmermann." 

Jack rolls his eyes. "Bits, my father is going to demand those cookies from you every year until he _dies_." He frowns. "Although next year we'll have to figure out how to get them up here on the plane without ending up with a bag of crumbs." There's a suspicious silence from the laptop. Jack looks up sharply and narrows his eyes when he sees the high shine in Bitty’s eyes. "Bits?" Jack leans forward. "What's up, bud?" 

Bitty looks at his lap. "You really think they'll want me there next year?" 

"Hey," Jack says softly. "Lapinou." He waits until Bitty looks up at him and then smiles. "Honestly, they want you here _this_ year. They adore you, Bits. And that's knowing you as my best friend. Once I tell them the rest, you'll have an invitation for life." 

Bitty smiles, watery but real. "Thank you, Jack." 

"Any time. Now, I'll let you go. Probably got a lot of Christmas Eve baking to do." 

He laughs. "Lord, do I ever. You should see the kitchen; it's a regular war zone." 

"I bet. Good night, Bits. Love you." 

"Love you, too, honey," Bitty says. " _Chag sameach_." 

Jack grins. "Merry Christmas Eve." 

Bitty rolls his eyes. "This boy," he mutters, but he's smiling as he disconnects the call. 

Jack stares at the screen for a minute. He could do it right now. He could go find wherever Papa hunted Maman down to and tell them about him and Bitty, before he loses his nerve. He shuts his laptop—and sees the carnage of crumbs and blue icing that are the sole, sad remains of two dozen cookies. He shakes his head and takes the plate to the kitchen. He'll wait until after Papa's inevitable crash. 

*

Jack's back from his run and well into his coffee by the time Maman drags herself into the kitchen on Boxing Day. When she has somewhere to be, she can be awake and looking ready to stroll into a fashion show in under forty minutes. On mornings without obligations, she staggers around like an extra in a zombie film until she has at least two cups of coffee in her, and she doesn't bother getting out of her pajamas until after breakfast. 

"Bonjour, mon cher," she says, voice raspy, as she heads toward the coffee pot with single-minded determination. 

"Bonjour, Maman," Jack says. He sips his coffee and looks contentedly out the French doors at the beautiful new snow. He's all packed to fly back to Providence this evening. They have a game tomorrow, and then he'll head up to Samwell to spend New Year's Eve with Bitty and the gang. He had a good run this morning, and the world looks soft and still under a new blanket of snow. He honestly can't think of anywhere he'd rather be at this moment. 

Maman smiles softly as she sits next to him with her coffee. She's always favored it heavily doctored with cream and sugar, especially those gross flavored creamers that are mostly liquid plastic. She and Bitty are going to get along great. 

She glances under the table as she sits. "You like the socks, then?" 

Jack gives her a sly smile. He likes the socks a great deal; they're fleece-lined and covered with little geese, because Maman insists on getting him at least one Christmas present that has nothing to do with hockey. "I'm enjoying them as much as I can, because once Bittle finds them, I'm never getting them back." 

Maman laughs. "I'll get him his own pair, if you think he'd like that." She looks so happy. _Awed_ , almost. She's been doing that since yesterday morning, when he told her and Papa about Bitty. Like she can't believe that this happy, contented man who's managing his anxiety rather than letting it manage him, who's in a healthy relationship that he doesn't walk away from at the first hint of trouble, is her son. Honestly, sometimes he can't quite believe it, either. "Maybe one with rolling pins or pies." 

Jack shrugs. "He might, but he still wouldn't give these back. He claims stolen boyfriend clothes are more comfortable than his own." 

Maman laughs. "He's not wrong." She shakes her head sadly. "Something you don't get to experience, I imagine." 

"His aunt sent him a UGA hoodie for his last birthday that's at least two sizes too big. It's mostly mine now."

"Jack Zimmermann in a University of Georgia hoodie," Maman says wonderingly. "Now that I would love to see." 

Jack snorts into his coffee. He sets down his cup and turns the handle back and forth. Words are backing up behind his tongue, but he's not sure—it's as though telling them about Bitty has opened a floodgate, and now he wants all the secrets in the open. There haven't been many; after Jack's overdose they'd all committed to being as honest as possible with each other. But this hasn't been his secret to tell, before now. Now it is, in a way, and he— well, he's not sure what his parents know, so it'll be tricky, but if he can find a way to be honest about this, he wants that. 

"Maman," he says, and she makes an absent noise of assent. "How did you know Talia Hale?" 

That gets her attention. She puts down her mug with a thunk and stares at him wide-eyed. "I—" She clears her throat. "What makes you ask that?" 

He shrugs and looks into his coffee. "Derek and I have gotten close. He doesn't know a lot of stories about his parents from before he was born. It might be... nice?" He winces. 

But Maman is nodding like that's the most logical thing in the world, and she smiles as she puts her hand over his. "That's sweet of you, ma chouette." She pulls her hand away and wraps it around her mug. She looks out the window, gathering her thoughts. "When I first started in modeling, I was with an agency that worked all over the world, but mostly in New York and San Francisco. I was getting more work in San Francisco, so I was in the office a lot, picking up instructions for shoots, getting my paychecks. Talia worked for the agency, in their legal department." 

Jack nods, turning the words over. "Okay, but... that doesn't explain how you _knew her_. How much time could you have spent in the legal department?" 

Maman's smile turns into something more like a grimace. "Yes. Well." She clears her throat. Jack doesn't think he's seen her look this uncomfortable since their first family counseling session after the overdose. "One night after a shoot, I was walking home—I shared an apartment with three of the agency's other models—this was before I met your father, obviously—and I was." She swallows and clenches her hand in front of her throat. "I was attacked." 

And Jack, he hasn't anticipated those words. Hasn't bargained for how they would throw him back. Glowing eyes. Wicked fangs. That strange, loping, four-limbed run, so fast, _so fast_. 

"Jack? Are you with me yet, sweetheart? That's right; in and out, count with me." 

Jack has no idea how long he's been out of it, but as his breathing gradually slows and his heart stops thundering, he becomes aware of his mother's calm, quiet voice counting breaths, her hand holding his over her heart to feel its steady rhythm. 

Jack takes a sharp, gasping breath, and then a slower one that shudders through him. He lifts his eyes, and Maman smiles at him, shaky but genuine. Right after the overdose, she could never smile when he had an attack, afraid that each one would be the one that broke him for good. Now she acts like she did when Papa got hurt during a game: not something she _likes_ to see, because someone she loves is hurting, but something she knows damned well Jack can get past. 

" _Werewolves_ ," Jack gasps, still not quite getting air in easily enough. "You were attacked by werewolves, and Talia helped you." 

Maman's rueful smile transforms into shock and then pain as realization sets in. "Oh, sweetheart," she breathes. "The camping trip?" She shakes her head. "I _knew_ there was something strange about 'attacked by a mountain lion,' but I was too busy being worried about you to—what happened?" 

Jack closes his eyes, rubs his fingers against his temple. "An unstable pack moved into our building and—" He shakes his head, trying to clear away the memory. 

"Jack," Maman says, voice urgent and intense in a way he hasn't hear in years. "Did they—are _you_ , or, or Eric—" 

It takes him a second, but when he gets it, he covers her hands with his and rushes to assure her. "No, no, no, Maman, we're still perfectly human. Although there've been a few games where I don't think either of us would've minded the healing. Or the speed. Not that Bittle needs it." They laugh a little. "The alpha got me with his claws. It hurt like hell, but they healed well, and there's almost no scarring." He swallows. "I... I wondered how much I could say. How much you knew about the Hales before they died." 

"I never knew... a lot. I knew Talia and the children were werewolves, but her husband wasn't. I knew she was the alpha and had a full shift form, which was rare." Her gaze turns stormy. "I knew that people hunted them for no reason than that they existed. When I heard about the fire, I wondered—" 

"You were right," Jack says quickly. "A hunter set that fire." 

Maman shudders. "I'm so glad Derek has people in his life now." She smiles. "I'm glad he has you." 

"Haha, yes." Jack takes back one of his hands and rubs the back of his neck. "About that." He glances at her; she looks open and encouraging. "The other reason I asked. Derek's an alpha now. Again. Bittle and I... We're sort of part of his pack now, I guess? Peripherally?" 

Maman stares at him for a moment, and then she bursts into great, gulping laughter. Jack feels his face heat, and he starts to pull back his hand, but she grabs it hard in both of her own. "Jack. Oh, Jack, mon ange, I'm so, so sorry. I don't mean to laugh. It's just. Only you, love. Only you could make a friend and end up in a werewolf pack." 

Jack wants to protest, but he can't. And he's not about to tell her that the first friend he made at Samwell—maybe, he sometimes thinks, the first real friend he ever made—turns out to be a werewolf, too. "Euh, if Papa knows, you can tell him about this, but—" 

Maman shakes her head. "No. By the time your father and I met, I was working almost exclusively in New York, when I was in the States at all. Talia and I kept in touch until she died, but I hadn't seen her in years by that point." Her mouth turns down at the corners, and Jack nods in understanding. Maman's eyes twinkle. "You should bring your pack here this summer, if they're available," she says. 

Jack laughs, remembering the one time Shitty came to his parents' place. He's not sure any of them would survive a repeat. "Probably not. But thank you for offering." 

"All right," she says, holding up her hands in mock surrender. She smiles more gently and stands to get her precious second cup of coffee. She rests her hand on Jack's shoulder as she passes. "I'm proud of you, Jack," she says. "I'm so very proud of the man you've become." 

"Thank you, Maman," he says. He sits in the quiet of the kitchen, interrupted only by the clink of spoon against mug, smiling softly.


	2. Spring Semester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Text in guillemets («») means characters are speaking in French, even though the actual words are in English. I am assured by reliable authorities that all terminal punctuation (periods, commas, quotation marks, etc) goes on the outside. It looks weird to me, as a native English writer, but The Académie française knows what it's doing.
> 
> All typos within text conversations were left deliberately.

**February** **2016**

On Valentine's Day, Jack receives fifteen texts from both Wellies and Falconers, chirping him for "making me look bad" or "setting the bar too high." Dex texts that he's "double fucked," which makes no sense. The Samwell guys he understands, but he can't figure out how the Falconers know until he checks Bitty's Twitter and realizes that the quest for enough vessels to put all the roses in has become something of a saga. (Bitty’s tweets also wish Nursey a happy birthday, and Dex's text suddenly makes a lot more sense.)

In fact, he hears from everyone but the pack. Shitty and Lardo's shared hatred of Valentine's Day is legendary in SMH, so that's no surprise. Mason and Danny are... Jack's not sure if they're together right now, honestly. But surely Stiles would've had something to say about Jack filling every available surface in the Haus kitchen with roses.

He gets his answer at eleven, when he checks his phone after practice. The pack group chat has a photo from Stiles that he's somehow managed to put a content block on and has captioned, "My man is amazing (DO NOT OPEN if you're easily grossed out)." Intrigued, Jack clicks the box and is presented with a picture of a neatly field-dressed buck.

 **BITTLE:** I have SO MANY venison recipes y'all

Jack frowns at his phone as he tries to remember Bitty’s schedule.

 **ME:** Haha nice, Derek. Bittle, you should be in class.

 **BITTLE:** I AM in class, thank you very much

 **ME:** Then pay attention.

 **BITTLE:** it's called multitasking, mr zimmermann

 **STILES:** bitty u can barely unitask

 **MASON:** unless one of the tasks is pie

Bitty sends a string of chick and flame emojis. Jack grins and puts his phone away. Valentine's Day makes everyone act like an idiot. He's happy to be the biggest idiot of all.

 

**March 2016**

Derek doesn't see Jack that often at therapy. Between the Falconers' practice schedule and road trips, and Jack grabbing every minute with Eric that he can, maintaining a regular therapy schedule is practically impossible. Jack does a lot of his sessions via videoconference. Derek's own schedule is inconsistent, as well. As a freelancer, he has more flexibility than some of Jason's other patients, and he's usually happy to take whatever slot Jason has available.

But whenever their appointment times do line up, they grab coffee together at the place up the street. That's their first mistake, Derek supposes: having a regular place. Sitting by a window is probably the second, but he's a werewolf with depression and PTSD. He needs sunlight and nature, and he'll take them however he can get them.

What he needs right now, more than either of those things, is for Stiles and Eric to stop swooning.

"Can you _imagine_?" Eric asks, swaying toward the newspaper in Stiles' hand as though magnetized to it.

"Bitty, man, I'm imagining _right now,_ " Stiles says. He's making the face he always makes when he's thinking about sex. He thinks it's seductive. He's wrong. He gazes around the minimally decorated walls of his and Derek's bedroom and waves his copy of the _Eye_. "What size do you think, for the print: 20 by 30 or 22 by 32?"

"Be serious," Derek says, and he means it to be commanding, but to his own ears he sounds plaintive.

"Babe, it's the _Eye_ ," Stiles says. "No one takes it seriously." He waves his hand. "Even Jack doesn't look worried." Which, unfortunately for Derek's argument, appears to be true.

The Providence _Eye_ bills itself as an arts and entertainment newspaper, but it's a gossip rag of the old school. This is far from Jack's first appearance on its cover—as Providence's sole pro sports team, the Falconers feature regularly in the paper's pages.

But it _is_ the first time an article has featured a picture of Jack and Derek over the headline, "Falcs A in Secret Relationship?" The article, if it even deserves the name, relies heavily on words like "cozy" and "intimate" to imply something it doesn't dare say outright. Derek feels sick. In all honesty, the fact that no one else seems to care makes the feeling worse.

Jack sighs and sets his phone aside. "I'm worried," he deadpans, and Derek bites back a relieved grin. "These things blow over, but they're a pain in the meantime." He looks at Derek. "Georgia has ideas. We can talk strategy?"

Derek looks at Stiles and Eric, still having the vapors over the picture and rolling in waves of lust so strong Derek feels lightheaded. "In another room, maybe."

Jack takes another look at their swooning boyfriends, who now appear to be debating what Derek and Jack's kid would look like, and lets Derek lead him to the living room.

*

In a move as carefully planned as it looks accidental, Jack "lets" Barry Marks, a reporter from the _Eye_ , corner him after the Falconers' next home game. They put this one in the W column, which Derek thinks makes it easier to go through with what they're planning.

Derek watches it unfold on TV from the relative comfort of the Haus' green couch. The thing is terrifying but roomy, the fact that it can accommodate several members of SMH at once probably the only reason it hasn't been hauled to the curb or set on fire. Derek's sitting sideways with his back against the arm, Stiles sitting in the V of his legs, leaning his full weight against Derek's chest, holding Derek's arms tight around his waist.

"Jack! Great game tonight." That's Barry's opening gambit.

"Thanks, Barry," Jack says in full press mode. "The Flyers played some good hockey tonight, but we went out there and played hard as a team and put some great shots in."

"Drink," Adam says from somewhere on the floor, but it's half-hearted. The Jack Zimmermann Press Interaction Drinking Game lost a lot of traction once Eric lit into SMH about Jack's anxiety and how the carefully scripted responses, no matter how robotic they sounded, were how Jack could feel comfortable with assholes shoving mics in his face when he was just trying to put on some damn pants. ("Which reminds me: Shitty, put on some damn pants!")

"So, of course, everyone is talking—"

"Just you, Barry," Jack interrupts calmly. "You guys are literally the only ones talking about this."

"—about the picture of you and this mystery man."

The Wellies around them cheer. "Mystery man!" Justin yells.

Chris looks at Derek and says, with all sincerity, "Congratulations, Derek."

Derek bites down his smile and says, "Thanks, Chris."

On-screen, Jack says, "He's not _that_ mysterious," which causes Stiles to hoot with laughter.

"So you do know this man?" Barry asks. Jack blinks at him, a long, slow, _are you for real?_ look that has even an oblivious twit like Barry leaning back and hurrying on with, "What do you say to the rumors that you're in a secret gay relationship with him?"

"He says they're both bi, squid-dick!" Stiles ineffectually lobs a piece of popcorn toward the television.

Derek agrees, but it's even better when Jack replies, "I think his boyfriend is trying to decide what size print to have made so he can frame it and hang it in their bedroom."

Barry freezes. It's clear he has no idea how to respond.

Jack lifts his gaze to the ceiling in a _Lord give me strength_ expression he clearly got from Eric. "It's 2016, Barry. The NHL will never be a safe place for LGBTQ players if we can't even get over the idea that _knowing_ LGBTQ people is something to be ashamed of."

"Oh, absolutely," Barry says, nodding almost violently.

Jack sighs. "And it would help if the press stopped _writing about it_ like it's something to be ashamed of."

Barry stares at Jack for a long beat. Then he licks his lips and says desperately, "Now, Jack, about that Flyers defense!"

Derek doesn't need to be able to see Stiles to know how hard he's rolling his eyes. But Derek and Jack talked about this yesterday, and he knows Jack considers this a good outcome. Jack is _also_ disappointed that he can't yet talk about his _own_ boyfriend's reaction to the article. But as he glances at Eric, at the love and pride shining in his eyes, Derek thinks a foundation's been laid tonight. Eric and Jack won't be in hiding forever, and Jack's paved the way for them to step into the light.

* * *

Bitty greets Jack at the front door of the Haus with a furtive glance around and a barely-there kiss. Hurt and disappointment flash through Jack. The whole point of coming out to the Haus residents and the frogs was so they didn't have to hide anymore. Not here.

Not two seconds after Bitty ends the kiss and puts a surprisingly large amount of space between them, Dex appears in the doorway, leaning against the jamb in a way that does nothing to hide the Sin Bin behind his back. He faux salutes with his free hand. "Jack. 'Sup."

Jack's hurt evaporates, and he nods. "Poindexter."

Bitty tilts his head toward the stairs. "You ready?"

Jack shrugs. "Much as I can when I have no idea what's going on."

Bitty nods and leads him past Dex, chin defiantly lifted. He doesn't speak, in case an endearment tumbles out. Jack grins and follows, careful to keep his hands off any untoward part of Bitty's body. Which, according to the court of SMH, is every part of Bitty's body, when Jack's the one doing the touching.

"Sorry 'bout that," Bitty murmurs as they reach the top of the stairs. "He's awful close to having enough for the new dryer. Lord, the things that boy is fining for."

"I could _buy_ a new dryer," Jack says, rolling his eyes.

"Jack Laurent Zimmermann, you will do no such thing," Bitty says sharply. "You will let us stand on our own ten feet—well, fourteen, I guess; Dex and Nursey practically live here—and come up with the money ourselves." He frowns faintly as he opens his bedroom door. "Even if Dex _did_ fine me yesterday for pep-talking the muffins before they went in the oven."

Jack grins and spins them so his back's to the door, pulling Bitty in for a kiss. It's gentle but long and thorough, and it doesn't stop until a throat clears somewhere in the room.

Bitty pulls away slowly, eyes dazed, lips red. He doesn't look away from Jack as he says, "I'd like to remind everybody that this is _my danged room_ , and therefore, according to Haus Bylaw 17B, a no-fine zone."

"All right, _jeez_ ," Lardo mutters.

"Figures that would be the one bylaw you'd have perfectly memorized," Shitty says, sounding proud.

Jack and Bitty disentangle themselves. Jack nods at Mason, who's spinning around in Bitty's desk chair, and fist-bumps Lardo on the floor before resigning himself to the inevitable and sitting on the bed next to Shitty. Shitty immediately wraps his arms around Jack's torso and plants a moustachey kiss on his cheek. Bitty giggles and hops up into the sliver of space left between Jack and the wall.

"Anybody know what this is about?" Bitty asks.

Everyone shakes their heads, and Mason says, "Just that Stiles needed to talk to us.

"So where _is_ the little shit?" Lardo asks idly.

"He'll be here as soon as practice is over."

" _Lacrosse_ practice," Shitty hisses. Jack sighs and pats Shitty's leg. Shitty squints at him. "Zimmermann, you beautiful beast of a man, what the hell was that brawl against the Schooners last night?"

"Tater started it," Jack grumbles petulantly.

"You threw a punch!" Shitty says gleefully. "I think Gagne fell down from shock as much as from the hit."

Jack shrugs. He's not yet ready to talk about how some of the other teams have been giving him shit about his "secret boyfriend" since the post-game interview with Barry. He's sick of it—not the implication that he's gay; the only thing about _that_ that bothers him is that he's not gay. He's sick of everyone thinking he's dating _Derek._ Gagne's not a bad guy; Jack got caught up in the momentum of the fight Tater was already having with Strømmen. Honestly, Jack had mostly punched him to stop himself from yelling, "Yes, I have a secret boyfriend, and you've got the wrong guy!"

Shitty studies him for a second more and then grabs him in a headlock and gives him one hell of a noogie. "Proud of you, bro," he says. Then he takes Jack's face between his hands, stares into Jack's eyes with a weed-hazy gaze, and says, "Violence isn't the answer. Stay in school. Just say no! Take a bite out of crime!"

Though he's laughing almost too hard to connect, Bitty reaches around Jack, puts his hand on Shitty's face, and shoves. Shitty squawks in surprise and falls over backward so he's half off the bed, calling, "Only you can prevent forest fires!" and "Give a hoot! Don't pollute!"

The door opens, and Stiles pokes his head in, hair damp from his after-practice shower, crosse slung over his back. He looks at Shitty, opens his mouth, and then closes it, shakes his head, and comes fully into the room, closing the door behind him. "On second thought," he mutters. He leans against the door, gripping the knob behind his back, and studies the gathered pack.

 _Most_ of the gathered pack.

"Where's Fearless Leader?" Mason asks, catching Bitty's desk to stop the chair from spinning further.

"He, uh—" Stiles rubs the back of his neck. "I'm flying solo on this one."

Shitty hauls himself upright. "Brah! Is this a coup?!"

"Rad," Lardo murmurs.

"No, it's not—"

"Because Derek Hale and his literally supernaturally beautiful abs are the alphas of my heart, Stilinski. I will not stand for mutiny!" Shitty's moustache is quivering in indignation, and his emphatically gesturing index finger has almost put Jack's eye out at least twice.

"No, Shitty, _Jesus,_ it's not a coup, would you stop that?" Stiles puts both hands in his hair. He takes them out again and dumps all his stuff at the foot of the bed. He takes a deep breath and straightens. "In olden times," he begins.

Immediately, Shitty sits up, going on full alert. "Dude."

"—it was customary—"

"Dude!"

Stiles points at Shitty but doesn't look at him. "Shut your caterpillar face, Knight." He takes a deep breath. "If a pack had an unmarried alpha—"

Shitty leaps off the bed and onto Stiles with a cry of delight. Stiles also gives a cry, much more of dismay, as he goes down under a tangle of limbs and moustache. "Shitty! Get the fuck off me!"

"No!" Shitty yells back. "Come on, man! If ever a situation demanded hugging it out—"

"Would one of you assclowns explain what the fuck is going on?" Lardo asks. She's scooted up toward Bitty's end of the bed and drawn her knees up toward her chin to avoid the flailing pile of bros on the floor.

With a mighty heave and possibly some magic, Stiles throws Shitty off and stands again. Shitty doesn't go far, just sits on the floor pretty much where they were lying and slides back to rest against the the bed.

Stiles glares at Shitty in warning and then turns back to the others. "In the old days, and still today in more traditional packs, if a pack had an unmarried alpha, it was customary for a suitor to ask for the pack's blessing before proposing to the alpha."

Bitty squeaks.

Stiles spreads his hands. "So this is me, asking for the pack's blessing before I propose to the alpha."

There's a beat of silence, and then everything explodes into motion. Bitty and Shitty launch themselves at Stiles. Bitty reaches him first, throwing his arms around Stiles and murmuring something into his neck that makes Shitty and Mason cackle. Shitty wraps himself around Stiles' back, his gangly arms getting Bitty mostly into the hold, as well. He rocks all three of them back and forth for a second and then calls, "Come on, assholes! Pack hug!"

"Shut up," Mason grumbles, but he stands and approaches the side of the current hug, gently stretching his arms around all three of them.

Jack sighs and stands, coming up behind Bitty and wrapping his arms around him. He's also holding Shitty's arms, and his fingers are occasionally brushing against both Stiles and Mason.

"You look like idiots," Lardo says, but she comes up to the other side of the blob, across from Mason, and holds everyone's sides as best she can.

"So, uh, is that a yes?" Stiles asks from the middle of the pile, his voice muffled against Bitty's shoulder. "Do I have your blessing?"

"I consider marriage to be an archaic and unnecessary tool of the kyriarchy," Shitty says, "but if you would like to be a part of it with our beloved alpha, then you have my blessing." He smacks a kiss against the side of Stiles' neck.

"Hard same," Lardo says.

"Same," Jack says, "only without the archaic and unnecessary tool part."

"Ditto, honey," Bitty says.

Mason laughs. "You know Liam and I thought you two were married from the minute we met Derek. But I guess you have my blessing to do it again."

Stiles gives a sharp bark of a laugh. Then he jumps and looks up with a strange scowl. "Now we have the Haus ghosts' blessing, too."

"The Haus ghosts are _real_?" Bitty demands. "I thought it was Ransom's reaction to stress."

"Nah, man, they're super real," Shitty says. "And they're super in the room."

"Well that's _weird_ ," Bitty grumbles, and Mason laughs in agreement.

"All right, come on," Stiles says. He's suddenly in motion, elbows jabbing at people's soft bits, feet kicking out at every obstacle. "Hugs are great, but breathing's better. Everybody move."

The hug breaks up instantly. Within seconds, Stiles and Mason are debating the logistics and politics of Samwell versus Beacon Hills as a wedding venue. Shitty and Lardo return to the bed, probably to complain about how terrible marriage is. Jack's left alone with Bitty in the middle of the room. (Well, he assumes they're alone. It's anybody's guess where the ghosts have gone. Jesus. _Ghosts_. This is his life now.)

Jack looks down at Bitty and isn't surprised to see a tear slide down his cheek. He puts a hand on Bitty's back and rubs gently. "You okay, bud?"

Bitty sniffs and wipes his eyes. "I'm a crier, Jack Zimmermann. I'm surprised you don't know it."

Jack smiles. "Bits, I've watched the olive episode of _Good Eats_ with you. Believe me; I know."

Unsurprisingly, this makes Bitty sniffle louder. "He loves The Lady of the Refrigerator _so much_." He crowds closer and puts his hands on Jack's chest. "They're gettin' _married_ , Jack," he says, voice tinged with awe.

"Yeah." Jack rests his hands on Bitty's hips. "That'll be us someday, eh?"

Bitty squints up at him. "That better not've been a proposal, mister."

Jack smiles. "No no no. Not yet. You'll know."

"All right," Bitty says with faux scepticism.

Jack glances over and sees Stiles looking their way, smiling softly. Jack smiles back. "You know how you're going to do it yet?"

Stiles groans and throws his hands up. "Now, see, Zimmermann, why you gotta be like that?"

Jack shrugs and slides his arm over so it wraps more fully around Bitty's waist. "You have to plan these things right." Jack swears he can feel Bitty's squint get sharper, but he refuses to look.

"I'm _basking_ , Jack," Stiles says tartly. "Give me my damned moment."

There's a knock on the door. When Bitty calls, "Come in!" Ransom's head appears around the side. He looks around and blinks at the group. "Wow, okay, this is... like... a weird collection of my favorite people. And Stilinski."

Stiles flips Rans off while Jack and Shitty crowd Ransom for hugs and back-slaps. Ransom provides them but keeps his eyes on Lardo as he says, "Lards. Bruh. Keagster planning. Reading Room, five minutes."

"Yo," Lardo says, saluting. Rans looks around the room again, deeply suspicious, and then leaves.

Stiles raises an eyebrow at Lardo. "What's a keagster?"

Lardo lifts both hands. "Easter," she says, moving one hand in front of her chest, "plus kegster." She moves the other and links her fingers together.

"That makes _no sense,_ " Mason mutters.

Stiles snorts. "Like _anything_ these guys do makes sense." He ignores the hockey bros' scorn and says, "What's it entail, this keagster?"

Lardo shrugs. "Probably the same as a usual kegster, but with more Easter grass. And about a hundred plastic Easter eggs full of tiny booze bottles."

Stiles scoffs. Then he pauses. "A hundred, huh?"

"Knowing Rans? At _least_."

There's a worrisome light in Stiles' eyes. He claps Mason on the shoulder once and then veers across the room to Lardo, throwing an arm around her shoulders. "Lardo," he says, steering her toward the door, "let's talk about these hollow Easter eggs."

Bitty groans as they leave the room. Jack can't help but agree. He's never entirely sure with Stiles what he's getting into. He hopes that, whatever it is, Derek will one day forgive him for not giving him a warning.

* * *

Derek is usually very careful not to listen in on Stiles' phone conversations. But it's been fifteen minutes, and the rising levels of stress and sadness in Stiles' voice are getting distracting.

Heightened awareness of his pack's every mood. An alpha "perk" he'd been more than happy to forget about.

Derek focuses his hearing enough to hear Stiles say, "That's not fair— _that's_ not true!" He pushes further and hears Lydia—voice faint and muffled but unmistakable—reply, "Maybe not now, but who knows where things will stand a year from now."

Derek pulls back his hearing abruptly. A year from now. When Stiles will be getting ready to graduate from Samwell and a lot of decisions will have to be made about the pack's future. He's not ready to think about that now. Frankly, he's amazed that Stiles _is._

Derek paces into the screened-off corner of the living room that's been designated as his study. He's between manuscripts. It's too cold to go for a run in human form and too light to go in full shift. He can only do so many pull-ups in a day, and he values his life too much to distract Stiles while he's on a call with Lydia. With a resigned sigh, he opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out the five Rolodex cards Lou copied for him all the way back in November. He's avoided them long enough.

Derek flips through the cards for Clary Hawes' children. Then he stops, frowning. He flips through them again. And again. He pulls out his phone and brings up the Google app. Then he swears. Quietly.

He pokes his head around the screen to confirm that Stiles is still on the phone. Then he swipes over the pack group chat.

 **Me:** thoughts on fate, go

 **Lardo:** derek hale why are you lIKE THIS

 **Shitty:** ok so like i USED TO think

 **Mason:** here we go

 **Shitty:** that it was a complete load of shit  
**Shitty:** I MEAN you got these incredibly privileged people saying "it was fate" when they really mean "it was my grandfather's shrewd investment sense" or "it was a system of interconnected power structures specifically designed to ensure the success of people like me."

 **Me:** fair

 **Shitty:** but now! I mean, look at me!

 **Lardo:** see above re: grandfather's shrewd investment sense and interconnected power structures

 **Shitty:** touché, ms. duan  
**Shitty:** what i'm saying is i came to samwell a single, friendless omega, not looking to be anything else

 **Mason** : and then you banged a lax bro

 **Lardo:** hewitt i swear to gOD

 **Shitty:** AND THEN I found a pack! a bff! the love of my life!

 **Lardo:** gross

 **Shitty:** idk, man. maybe that's not fate. I prolly could've gone someplace else and found someone or something else. but it wouldn't be this. like something would be missing i just wouldn't know what. you know?

 **Lardo:** b shitty knight get your ass into this bedroom RIGHT NOW

 **Shitty:** peace out bros

 **Mason:** *ugh* y is my bf literally 3000 mi away?  
**Mason:** out of curiosity, y r u asking abt fate?

Derek's staring at his phone, trying to figure out how to answer, when he hears a long, tortured groan from the bedroom, followed by the door opening and Stiles padding across the living room floor. "Derek? Babe, what the hell is this conversation about fate? Wait, where _are_ you?"

"I'm in here," Derek calls softly.

A few seconds later, Stiles' head appears around the screen, his smile exhausted but genuine. "Hey. What's going on?"

"Here." Derek moves his laptop, making a space on the desk for Stiles to sit on. He sits, and Derek rolls his chair into the space between his knees. It's such a familiar maneuver for them that Derek stops, hand halfway to the pile of Rolodex cards, worrying that he's going to taint it by association. He shakes his head. If they can bear to step foot in Beacon Hills despite all of _its_ terrible associations, something simple as a seating configuration can survive this. Derek picks up the cards and hands them to Stiles but puts his hands over Stiles' so he can't look at them yet. "These are the cards Lou gave us after Alpha Hawes died."

Stiles nods. "Yeah, sure. Her kids, yeah?"

"And the one you asked for, remember?"

"Oh, right! The Theta Alpha Theta pledge."

Derek nods and takes his hands away. Stiles flips through the cards, and Derek sees the moment he has the same realization Derek did. His hands slow, and he flips through the cards again. "Lou messed up," he says, vaguely puzzled.

Derek shakes his head. "No. They didn't."

Stiles waves the card in his hand. "We have two cards with the exact same information. They must've copied Alpha Hawes' daughter's card twice."

" _Or_ ," Derek says, holding out his phone with his earlier Google search open, "it's possible that Alpha Hawes had her last child late in life—it's not uncommon among born wolves—and that that child came to Samwell."

Stiles looks at the cards again. He flips between the two almost identical cards. The first says _Christine Hawes Biel, Nashua, New Hampshire._ The second says _Christine Biel, Nashua, New Hampshire, Biel Pack (Nadine Biel, alpha)_. "Jenny and Mandy's pledge was a _werewolf_?" He looks at Derek, eyes wide.

Derek shrugs one shoulder. "It's highly likely."

Stiles' hand shoots out and grabs Derek's arm. "But that means hunters, right? I mean, it means that whatever happened to Mandy and Jenny was probably done by hunters trying to get at Christine."

Derek sighs and rubs his face with his free hand. "Yeah. Probably."

" _Shit,_ " Stiles mutters. He looks at the cards one more time. Then he grins. "You know what this means, don't you?"

Derek cocks an eyebrow and waits.

" _Road trip_!" he yells.

Before Derek can stop him (even with alpha speed, he's sometimes not quite fast enough to keep up with Stiles), Stiles has texted the pack. When he hands Derek's phone back, it has two new messages:

 **Me:** hale pack road trip to NH, yo!

 **Mason:** PLEASE tell me stiles stole your phone, d

Derek glares at the phone screen. "This is serious, Stiles," he says, not looking up.

"I know." Stiles stills. "Hey. Derek." He rests his fingertips against Derek's jaw and tilts his face up. His eyes are wide and bright, searching Derek's face intently. "I _know_ , okay? I'm not any happier than you are about the idea of some asshole hunter violating, like, a hundred and twenty-five years of neutrality agreements. But, me? I'm an opportunist. If we have to drive to Bumfuzzle, New Hampshire, to meet a werewolf, why not make an adventure out of it? One last hurrah for the school year before Lardo fucks off to Boston and Mason goes back to Beacon Hills and Bitty does… whatever the fuck Bitty's doing this summer."

They'd done a pack road trip every year when Derek was a kid, to his dad's family reunion, but it was a very different experience when his pack was his family and he was riding in a van from northern California to central Mexico with Cora kicking the back of his seat the entire time.

With his own pack in Beacon Hills, there hadn't been _time._ Though it felt like forever when he was living it, he'd only had a few months with his betas before Jackson's parents shipped him to England, the alpha pack almost killed Boyd and Erica, and he'd so completely lost confidence in himself that he'd shoved Isaac into Scott's pack before Scott was even an alpha. They'd been fighting for their lives the entire time; road trips weren't on the to-do list.

Derek leans up out of his chair and kisses Stiles. He curls his fingers around Stiles' thigh to anchor himself. "Thank you," he murmurs.

Stiles pushes his fingers into Derek's hair, and Derek leans into the touch. "You're welcome."

Derek glances over and sees his phone light up with a new text notification. He reads the text and snorts, tilting the phone to show Stiles.

 **Mason:** wait. is this about fate? is fate in *new hampshire*?

Stiles laughs. Derek stares at the phone until the screen goes dark again. Then he thumbs it on again, opens the reply window, and replies, _Something like that._

 

**April 2016**

Derek watches with a faint smile as Jack's truck pulls up in front of the Haus. He waits while Jack gets out, bringing the familiar scents of ice and anxiety meds. He's about to go inside (he's not _hiding_ in the Reading Room, no matter what Stiles says. Anyone here would be more than welcome to join him. It's not his fault most of the team is still scared of him. Well, maybe it's his fault. A little) when the passenger door opens and Alexei Mashkov tumbles out. And oh. _Oh_. A lot of things make a lot more sense now.

"Jack, there is man on roof," Mashkov says.

Jack glances up and smiles faintly. "Yeah, that's Derek." He waves, and Derek waves back before climbing inside.

Derek follows Stiles' heartbeat to the kitchen, where he's helping Eric cut lattices for a mess of mini-pies. Derek squeezes Eric's shoulder, kisses Stiles' temple (ignoring the weird way Stiles jumps at the contact), and says, "Jack's here. Mashkov's with him."

Eric brightens immediately. He carefully but quickly finishes the crust he was working on and wipes his hands on his apron. "You are awfully handy to keep around, Mr. Hale," he says. He eyes Stiles' work and grins at him. "You're doing great, honey," he says and laughs at the ridiculous dance Stiles does in response to the praise. He books it out of the kitchen and pushes open the front door, calling a hello to the new arrivals.

"Hey," Derek says quietly, "you okay?"

"What? Yes?" Stiles looks quickly at Derek and then quickly away again. "I mean, _yes_. Yes, yes, I am definitely fine why wouldn't I be fine there is absolutely no reason why I wouldn't be fine."

Derek stares flatly at Stiles. His heartbeat was perfectly steady until the last part, but it's also going so fast that Derek is legitimately worried about his health. "Stiles—"

Stiles takes a deep breath, lets it out, and rests his hand on Derek's cheek. "I'm fine, really." His heart is still racing, but it's steady. "Thank you for worrying. It's—" His other hand gestures around, sending puffs of flour everywhere. "—today, you know?"

Derek _doesn't_ know. Stiles has been to scores of SMH kegsters throughout his three years at Samwell. As far as Derek can tell, the only differences today are the tiny Easter eggs and the birthday crowns Lardo and Justin are wearing.

And the fact that Derek is here. That Stiles had _insisted_ that Derek be here.

Derek pulls Stiles to him and kisses him briefly. "Now, Alexei Mashkov is here. You're definitely going to want to meet him."

"Eh." Stiles shrugs. "I mean, if you've met one incredibly attractive, incredibly talented professional hockey player—"

"Stiles," Derek says. "Alexei. Mashkov."

Stiles blinks, and then his expression clears. "Oh god. Is there—yup, okay, coming!" He wipes his hands on a kitchen towel and sprints for the door, abandoning his lattices on the counter. Derek hopes Alexei Mashkov doesn't care a ton about etiquette, because he has a sinking feeling that his boyfriend's about to be a giant bag of awkward.

The situation doesn't look as dire as he'd feared when Derek arrives on the porch. It's just Stiles looking up at Mashkov with quiet awe and saying, "No wonder I could never get a read on you. I've never seen you off ice."

Mashkov looks back in baffled amusement. "Zimmboni, who is this? Is funny."

Jack rolls his eyes. "That's Stiles. He's a friend of Bittle's. He plays lacrosse. You get used to him."

"Hello, lacrosse friend of B," Mashkov says.

"You're a morozko," Stiles says, delighted.

Mashkov rears back like he's been slapped. "How do you know this? How do you know this _word_ , even?"

Stiles waves it off. "I'm the pack archivist. One of them." He glances around. "The other one's here somewhere." He makes a face. "Shit, how is _anything_ getting done in Beacon Hills?"

Derek, Jack, and Eric let this roll off them as a matter of course, but Mashkov looks gobsmacked. "Pack? You are—" He glances around and then leans closer, practically whispering in Stiles' ear, "—werewolf?"

"Nope, I'm a spark." He holds out his hand, and Mashkov shakes. "Stiles Stilinski, Emissary to the Hale Pack." He gestures at Derek. " _He'_ s a werewolf. My alpha, Derek Hale."

"Zimmboni," Mashkov says, shaking Derek's hand enthusiastically, "you do not tell me you have werewolf friend."

"Tater, what would _ever_ have made me think that was something I could tell you?"

Mashkov honest-to-god _pouts_. "You tell me you are dating B."

"Tater, honey," Eric says, patting his giant arm, "most people at least believe queer folks _exist_."

Stiles coughs a laugh. "Hey, man, I'm sorry I blurted it like that. Derek will probably tell me that was super rude."

"Not _just_ Derek," Eric mutters.

Stiles flails his hands around. "It's—you don't—look, my ability to recognize and identify supernatural beings was honed by two and a half years of supernatural beings trying to _kill me_ on a pretty much weekly basis. I take pride in that skill. But ever since the first Falconers game I came to, I have been trying to get a read on you and _failing_ , like, one thousand percent. But I get it now. The only times I've seen you off-ice have been watching Falcs TV. It doesn't show through a camera, does it?"

Mashkov shakes his head, Stiles' torrent of words apparently having dried up his own.

"Somebody wanna explain what the heck's going on?" Eric demands.

Stiles blushes and glances at Mashkov. "Do you want to...?"

"No, no," Mashkov smiles faintly as he gestures at Stiles. "You are on roll, yes?"

"Yeah, okay, so, uh, #7 here is a morozko. It's, uh, well, the translation I always see is 'father frost,' which, _ugh_."

Mashkov shrugs. "It does what it needs to do."

"Right, so, that's a, like, an ice spirit, basically. Like, this guy right here, sort of a literal personification of ice, which, damn, how cool is _that_?"

Mashkov preens.

"Thing is, you can't _see_ that part of him when he's, you know, in his element. So, like, if someone handed him a glass with ice in it, he would look like a normal dude again."

"He looks like a normal dude _now_ ," Eric says.

"To you," Derek says with an apologetic smile. "He looks different to Stiles and me. Perks of being supernatural."

Eric harrumphs but leans next to Jack against the side of the Haus and doesn't say anything else. Jack looks thoughtful. "Or if you only saw him on or right next to the ice during hockey games."

"Yes, _exactly_!"

Jack looks at Mashkov with a searching gaze. "You thought I was one."

Mashkov shrugs. "Before I meet you, what do I know? Jack Zimmermann is very good at hockey, and some say Jack Zimmermann is…"

"Cold," Jack says quietly.

Mashkov nods. "I watch your interviews and I see you even have the eyes." When Jack's eyebrows go up, Mashkov says, "Brown eyes like mine, pretty rare. Most morozko have blue eyes. Like you. Like my mother."

Derek blinks. Alexei Mashkov's mother, three-time Russian national women's figure skating champion. Yeah, that makes sense.

"Then I meet you, and I think you are quiet, not cold. We step onto ice together, and I know you are not morozko. But you are Zimmboni, and that is very good."

Jack flushes at the praise. Eric's having none of it. "Hold up, now. Stiles said you can't see an elemental in their element."

Mashkov's eyes twinkle. " _He_ cannot see elemental in our element. _We_ cannot see each other _out_ of it."

"Well that's ridiculous," Eric says, crossing his arms.

"I don't make the rules of magic," Stiles, Mashkov, and Derek chorus.

Eric tosses up his hands. "I give up. I'm gonna go find some normal humans. Or Lardo." He wanders off into the yard.

Jack claps Mashkov on the shoulder. "Come on, Tater. Let me introduce you around."

"Oh, hey," Stiles says, jumping after them, "let me come with you. I have, like, so many questions. For research purposes!" Mashkov looks deeply uncertain, but Stiles has unparalleled tenacity and rolls along like he belongs there. Derek never ceases to be amazed by how far that gets Stiles in life.

Derek hangs around on the porch for about ten minutes. He's on the verge of retreating back to the Reading Room when Mashkov reappears in front of him, grinning widely and holding out his fists. "Lardo says I make you choose."

Derek sighs. Maybe a drink wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, even if it won't do anything. He taps Mashkov's hand and is rewarded with a pastel blue Easter egg that contains a tiny plastic bottle of vodka. "Thank you, Alexei Sergeyevich," he says, uncapping the bottle.

Mashkov beams. "Ah! You know patronymics! Most Americans do not." He pounds Derek's back. _Hard._ "You call me Tater."

Derek pauses with the vodka less than an inch from his mouth. "Really?" He tries to leave those nicknames for the teams.

He nods quickly. "We do not know each other very long. But we are… supernatural in natural world, yes? We should be friends."

"Um, okay. You can call me Derek." Then he feels like an ass, because what the hell _else_ would anyone call him? He chugs the vodka to cover his gaffe—and chokes as it hits him hard. "What _is_ this?"

Tater gives a booming laugh. "Wolfsbane vodka. Lardo tells me to give to you."

"What's in the other hand?"

Tater holds out a green Easter egg. "Wolfsbane rum. Also for you."

 _Now_ it's like the parties Derek remembers from college.

Derek and Tater float around the Haus. They sit with Chris, Caitlin, and Will until they make Derek feel old. They answer Tony's questions about Russia, and California, and the NHL, and freelancing, until they make him feel tired. He watches Lardo devastate Tater at beer pong and Nurse do a surprisingly elegant kegstand for someone who routinely trips over thin air.

Every time he turns around, Tater isn't far. Derek's not sure what it's about, but it's distracting enough that several hours pass before he realizes he hasn't seen much of his pack since Stiles left the porch. Lardo and Mason show up periodically with more wolfsbane-infused alcohol for him, and of course Jack's never far from where Eric's holding court in the kitchen. But they haven't interacted with Derek much, and he hasn't so much as glimpsed Stiles in hours.

It's late April in Massachusetts. The days are getting longer, but sunset is still fairly early. So it's not long before Lardo stands on the back of the couch and yells, "ALL RIGHT, LISTEN UP! It's gonna be dark in like an hour. Please, for the love of all that's good, go outside and find our damn Easter eggs, because I don't want to be stepping on them for the next month. As you were." She hops off the couch and gives Derek a fist-bump as she wanders out of the room.

Tater appears at Derek's elbow and steers him toward the door. "Derek!" he says. "You have good eyesight, yes? We find Easter eggs for pong champion."

Derek goes willingly. The buzz from his last shot (wolfsbane brandy, maybe?) has faded, and the press of people inside the Haus is weighing on him. The cool air and open space of the backyard helps his breath come easier. He wanders around the yard, picking up some eggs and leaving some for other people to find.

He's about to go back inside, because he's out of pockets to stuff eggs into, when he glances up into the beams that attach the rickety awning to the back of the Haus. Most people wouldn't even look up there. But one night while he was _extraordinarily_ stoned, Shitty had climbed onto the railing, at great risk to life and limb, and carved the Hale triskele into the beam. Derek _always_ looks.

Derek climbs onto the railing, his footing much surer than Shitty's had been, and pulls down the red egg. It's the first primary-colored egg he's seen, a deep, rich red, not the weak orangey red he usually finds in plastics. He frowns as it shakes gently in his hand; it doesn't clatter like the others, but there's definitely something inside, something that _shuffs_ softly against the plastic. Derek hops from the railing to the steps and pries off the top of the egg. There's a black velvet bag inside, and he's about to tug it out when Stiles says his name very quietly.

Derek turns, and there's Stiles, standing at the bottom of the steps, the pack in a loose half-circle behind him. The rest of the yard is somehow empty. They're the only ones here.

Stiles' outfit is different from what Derek saw him in earlier. He can't remember what hideous slogan t-shirt and plaid flannel Stiles had been wearing, but now he's in those dark red jeans that make his legs and ass look like walking sin, a long-sleeve black button-down, and a gray waistcoat. He looks amazing and determined and the most... _adult_ Derek thinks he's ever seen. Derek's heart starts pounding. He's sure Shitty and Mason can hear it, but he can't look to see. He literally can't take his eyes off Stiles.

Stiles, who's slowly climbing the stairs. Stiles, who's taking the egg away from Derek before he can accidentally crush it and whatever's inside. Stiles who's taking his hands and looking into his eyes with an intensity Derek hasn't seen on his face since... well, since the day a determined but terrified seventeen-year-old faced a scared and closed-off werewolf and begged him to try.

"Derek," Stiles says, "I had a speech planned. Uh, Scottie helped me write it, so it has more Mario and Princess Peach references than is probably healthy." He laughs, barely more than a hitched exhale. "The, uh, the gist of it was: from the very beginning, even when we—I mean, we could barely stand each other back then, right? But we both knew the other was a good person to have on our side." His smile widens, and Derek finds himself helpless to do anything but smile back, despite his thundering heart. "Now we love each other. And there is _still_ no one I'd rather have at my side, and no one's side I'd rather be at. For the rest of my life."

Stiles pulls out the velvet bag, letting the egg fall to the floor with a muted clatter. He loosens the drawstring and tips the bag up. Two rings slide into his cupped palms, and even though Derek _knew_ —he _knew_ this couldn't be going anywhere else—the air rushes out of his lungs, and his vision tunnels down to this, to Stiles' hand and the promise he's holding in it.

"Derek Simon Hale," Stiles says, "I have the blessing of your pack and your nearest relative—uh, Cora, I mean, because _fuck_ Peter—and my father, grudgingly given though it was. Please, will you do me the honor of marrying me?"

When Derek was fifteen, he'd ended the life of the person he loved more than anything to spare her the suffering brought about by his tendency to trust the wrong people.

When Derek was sixteen, the person he'd loved more than anything burned his family alive, and he'd stopped trusting anyone who wasn't a packmate.

When Derek was twenty-two, the person he'd thought he loved more than anything had turned out to be using him as a battery in her vengeance quest, and his love and trust for her turned out to be a spell.

Now Derek is twenty-five, and the person he loves more than anything is asking him to trust in a future he rarely allows himself to imagine.

So, yeah, he takes a second. Instead of immediately gathering Stiles into his arms and shouting " _Yes_!" as loudly as he can, Derek takes a second to memorize this moment—the waning half-moon in the sky; the cool air of a late April evening in Samwell; his pack watching from the dimly lit, Solo-cup-littered yard of the Haus; and Stiles, always Stiles, waiting patiently, holding Derek's hands _so tightly_ to keep them both grounded.

Then Derek smiles, squeezes Stiles' hands, and says, quietly, simply, "Yes." What other word is there?

Stiles exhales hugely and smiles, all twitching lips and darting tongue. "Oh, thank _god_ ," he says. "I mean, everybody told me there was no way you'd say no, but—"

Derek smiles and lifts his hand to Stiles' face, rubbing his thumb across Stiles' cheekbone. "Stiles? I love you. There's no way I would say no."

"Okay, okay, good. That's good. I love you, too." Stiles nods uncontrollably for a second and then stops, smiles ruefully, and holds out his hand. It's shaking so much the rings are jumping. "Uh, I think you're gonna have to do this part, dude, because I am... Whoo! I think that was it for my nerves."

Derek steadies Stiles with one hand and picks up the larger ring with the other. It's wood, polished and lacquered smooth, a deep, rich brown with a beautiful chatoyance faintly visible in the moonlight. A triskele has been burned into the outside. God, it's perfect. He slides it onto his left ring finger before picking up the smaller ring and doing the same for Stiles.

And then, _and then_ he finally gets to pull Stiles— _his fiancé_ —into his arms and kiss him like he's wanted to do since the second he realized what was about to happen. Like he pretty much always wants to do, if he's honest.

It takes a while, but the pack's whistles and applause finally register in Derek's brain. He ends the kiss (was it one kiss? Was it a hundred?) and laces his fingers with Stiles', pulling him down the stairs and into the group hug that's waiting for them. Their pack surrounds them instantly, all cold hands (Eric) and facial hair in inappropriate places (Shitty).

"Awww," Mason says from somewhere on the edge of the circle, "just like last time. Only colder."

The others laugh, and something from Stiles' proposal speech tugs at Derek. "Did you really ask the pack's blessing?"

"Like a _proper_ _suitor_!" Shitty crows. "My grandmother was so impressed when I told her."

Derek scowls. "Your grandmother is a horrible person. I've met her."

"True, but she's a very impressed horrible person, so, congratulations."

"Also," Stiles says, "you should call Cora ASAP if you want to avoid an ass-kicking."

Derek snorts. "Noted." He moves his hand so Eric can come more fully into the hug, and the moonlight glints off his ring. "These rings are amazing. Where did they come from?"

"Lardo made them," Stiles says, voice warm with pride. "At this point, I think there is literally nothing she can't do."

"What?" Derek wrenches himself around so he's facing Lardo. "I—"

Lardo shoves Shitty aside and wraps her arms around Derek's waist. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and presses his lips against her hair.

"You're welcome," she says.

It still doesn't come easily to Derek, physical affection, words of appreciation. Things that were second nature growing up and that have been taken from him time and again—that he's denied himself, since Paige died. But he's trying, and it's easier every day. At moments like this, he knows his pack understands.

The back door creaks open. Tater, Ford, and the frogs tumble onto the steps and peer excitedly down at them. "Well?!" Tater shouts. "Stiles, do you ask?"

"Yeah, man," Will says, "can we congratulate you yet, or is this still a pack moment?"

"Dex!" Chris wails.

"Oh, dude, _chill_ ," Nurse says, and Derek can't tell if he means Will or Chris.

" _What_?" Will asks. "Are we seriously still pretending we don't know?" Ford smacks his arm.

At pretty much any other time, Derek would be in full defensive mode. But he's literally enveloped in his pack, his brand new engagement ring a surprisingly comforting weight around his finger. So many things about Samwell have gone so differently than they'd predicted. Why should this surprise him?

"How the hell do you know?" Stiles asks.

Nurse shrugs. "One of my moms is a jiniri. It gives me fuck-all abilities, but I _can_ spot another supernatural."

"Oh, uh, me too," Chris says. "Well, I mean, it's my grandfather, and he's mer, but yeah! That's how I know!"

"I knew it!" Shitty and Derek say at once. They stare at each other.

"I thought it was you!" Derek says.

"I thought it was ambient Haus magic," Shitty says.

"Thanks, guys," Nurse grumbles.

Stiles looks at Will, who looks at Mason. "Mason is _very_ competitive. Our Xbox controllers all have claw dents in them."

Mason protests loudly while the others explode with laughter. Nurse jostles Will's shoulder and says, "Come on, Dex. Say the word. You're so _sexy_ when you say the word."

Will flushes to his hairline but says, "Yes, all right, I'm also fjölskylduvinur." Nurse swoons. Shitty opens his mouth, probably to say "Gesundheit." Eric elbows him hard in the ribs. "It's Icelandic for 'family friend,'" Will continues. "Icelandic selkies use it for humans who give aid to the community." When everyone continues to stare, he huffs and says, "My family owns lobster boats off the coast of Maine. You can't throw a rock in that part of the Atlantic without hitting an Icelandic selkie."

"Dex!" Chris gasps. "Don't throw rocks at selkies!"

Will's already rolling his eyes when Nurse plants a smacking kiss on his cheek, which makes his eyes roll harder. "Hear that?" Nurse says. "My man's a selkie ally."

"Ford, honey, how about you?" Eric asks before things can get more ridiculous.

Magnified by her glasses, Ford's eyeroll is even more impressive than Will's. "Well, Shitty, Derek, I may be new, but I notice two _wolves_ playing out here. And then I notice two sweaty naked dudes coming in through the back door."

"Oh," Derek says at the same time Shitty says, "Whoops."

Ford winks. "I'm not complaining."

Stiles and Lardo burst out laughing. Derek feels the heat of Shitty's blush radiating off his skin. The back door opens, spilling out Adam, Justin, and the tadpoles at varying levels of disinterested in what they've been up to out here. Derek wonders if Stiles put time-release magic on the door to keep them from being flooded with people.

The group hug breaks up. Derek firms up his hold on Stiles and pulls him into a languid kiss. "Thank you," he says when it's done.

Stiles does a ridiculous hip-shimmy that Derek finds adorable. "Did I do good, or did I do good?" he says.

Derek kisses him again. "You did perfect." While Derek would never have chosen an SMH kegster as the site of his proposal, nothing could have been more perfect than having it happen outside, surrounded by his pack. "I want to hear about you asking for the pack's blessing. And Cora's."

"It was fucking adorable!" Shitty yells from across the yard.

Stiles blushes, but he's smirking. "Later," he promises.

Derek leans down and rubs his face against the side of Stiles' neck. "I _also_ want to take you home, strip you naked, and mark every inch of you."

Stiles shivers, his hands clutching Derek's arms as his scent floods with desire. "Also later," he says, voice rougher than before. "But for now, if you think we're leaving this Haus without eating the special engagement pie Bitty made for us, you are sorely mistaken."

Derek jumps when Eric hip-checks him as he walks past. "Damned right, Mr. Stilinski!" he says as he heads inside with Jack on his heels.

Derek kisses Stiles once more, then loops an arm around Stiles neck and walks them slowly inside. The sex will be incredible tonight, he knows that for certain. But being surrounded by his pack, eating Eric's pie and celebrating his and Stiles' engagement? That's incredible, too.

* * *

Jack is trying so hard not to look at his phone. The game's over (a win for Providence, but a squeaker), and he's showered and dressed, but checking his phone will lead to him making his "B face," as Tater calls is, which will probably lead to a fine.

But.

«Am I boring you»? Marty asks in French, and Jack looks up guiltily.

«Oh, euh, sorry». Jack glances around. The locker room's mostly cleared out, but Thirdy, Tater, and Snowy are still hanging around, too. Jack waves his phone. «Samwell year-end team banquet tonight. I think»... He pauses and thinks about the things he's been considering for the past several days. «I think Bittle's going to get the C».

One of Marty's eyebrows goes up. «Yeah»?

Jack nods and runs his hand down the strap of his gear bag. «God, Marty, you should see him. He may not be the best player out there, but it's close, _god_ , it's close, sometimes I think about what he could've been if he'd started playing even at the beginning of secondary school, rather than halfway through—but he is the _heart_ of that team. Has been since his first day. I just wouldn't see it».

Marty stares at him for a long time, and Jack fidgets with the strap. Then Marty grins and nudges Jack with his elbow. «Well, kiddo, don't keep me in suspense».

Jack huffs a small laugh and takes his phone off airplane mode. The screen instantly lights up with notifications from the SMH group chat; the gang had been covertly texting under the table, mostly about how nice the place looked (Chowder), how nicely they all cleaned up (Bitty), how good the food was (Chowder again), and how much wearing a suit sucked (Dex). Then the speeches and awards had started, and everyone had fallen suspiciously silent. Jack stares at his phone. "Come on, Bits," he murmurs.

The phone rings. Jack's so startled he almost drops it. Then he laughs again and answers, "Lapinou?"

"Jack?" There's a strange sound, and it takes Jack a second to realize that Bitty is _crying_. His heart sinks. Has he had it all wrong? Did something happen? But, no, Bittle wasn't expecting the captaincy, because he sees everyone's good qualities but his own. If someone else were captain, he'd be happy for them.

"Hey, bud, what's going on?" he asks gently.

"Jack, I— They chose me as _captain_."

All thought of a dignified response to the news flies out the window as Jack's pride in Bitty explodes out of him in an echoing, "BITS!" and an exuberant fist-pump. " _Jack_ ," he hears faintly, but he's already holding the phone away from his ear, pointing at it and telling his teammates, "Bitty just found out he's captain!"

The others send up a clamor of support, from the restrained (Thirdy and Snowy) to the ebullient (Tater). Marty smiles. "Congratulations, kiddo," he says quietly.

Jack puts his phone back to his ear to convey the messages, but when he gets to Marty, he stops, suddenly unsure that Marty meant his congratulations for Bitty. Or, at least, _just_ for Bitty. Marty's been kicking around professional hockey for a long time. He probably remembers better than anyone else on the Falconers what Jack had been, how he'd been knocked off-course, the wall he'd retreated behind after. And now here Jack stands, at home enough with his new team to not only tell them about his boyfriend but to share these treasured moments with them— _yeah, okay,_ Jack thinks. _Maybe those congratulations are for me, too_.

"I'm so proud of you, Bits!" Jack says. "We're all so proud of you."

"But… but, _me,_ Jack," Bitty says, and now Jack hears it, the clear confusion under his tears.

Bitty adores his parents, and so far Jack's interactions with them have been perfectly pleasant. But at moments like this he wants to fly to Madison, get in Suzanne and Coach's faces, and demand to know what they said to Bitty—or _didn't_ say, more likely—to instill so much doubt in himself. He angles his body slightly away from overly curious teammates and repeats what he'd said to Marty: "Bits. You're the heart of that team. Who else would it be?"

"Chowder—" Bitty says, which answers the question of who he voted for.

"Maybe his senior year," Jack concedes. "But you know how hard it is for a goalie to be captain, and he's not there yet. You are, Bits. You _are_."

Bitty sniffles. "It's gonna be _so much,_ Jack," he whispers. "Senior year, and-and bein' captain, and _us_ , and—"

"And I will be here for whatever I can," Jack says. He's not sure it's _enough_ , what he can offer, but he needs Bitty to know that it's there for the asking. "As will your team." He glances over his shoulder at the guys, who are now making ridiculous faces at him. He snorts. "And mine. You got this, bud. And we've got you."

Bitty takes one last shuddering breath and then lets it out. "Thank you, Jack," he says quietly.

"Anytime, bud," he says, and he means it absolutely. "Congratulations."

Bitty laughs shakily. "Thank you, honey. Lord, I've been so busy freaking out that I haven't really been excited yet."

Jack shoulders his bag and jerks his head toward the door, completely unsurprised when the rest of the guys in the locker room fall in with him. "Yeah? You ready to be excited now?"

"Yeah, I think I am."

Jack grins. "Then tell me all about it."

Once he's in the truck, he puts the call on speaker and lets Bitty's words wash over him as he opens the pack text thread.

 **ME:** Congratulations, Bittle!

 **STILES:** y? what happened???

 **ME:** He got the C!

 **STILES:** HOLY SHIT CONGRATULATIONS BITTY!!!

 **LARDO:** nice, bits

 **MASON:** f yeah he did  
**MASON:** wait waht

 **LARDO:** hewitt i swear i will put you in a box and ship you back to your evil tree

 **STILES:** dude the c not hte d  
**STILES:** although

 **LARDO:** you too, stilinski

 **SHITTY:** look at our itty bitty all grown up and leading our troops into battle!  
**SHITTY:** ITTLE BITTLE BATTLE!

 **ME:** Mason, it means Bittle's going to be captain of SMH next year

 **MASON:** yes and?  
**MASON:** oh, wait, did we not know that?

 **ME:** The team had to vote.

 **MASON:** yeah ok but who else were they gonna vote for?

 **STILES:** ps derek is texting bitty something heartfelt and sappy off-list bc he's a giant marshmallow

 **BITTLE:** thanks, all of you

 **LARDO:** you deserve it, bro

 **BITTLE:** i… will take that under advisement, ms. duan

 

**June 2016**

Derek feels only a little guilty about the minor falsehoods they've told to orchestrate this moment. Bitty's parents think he's at Samwell overseeing year-end Haus cleanup. The team thinks he's in Providence with Jack. Only the pack knows that he's sacked out on the pull-out in Derek and Stiles' second bedroom, his overnight bag packed and ready for a road trip.

Bitty's up before Stiles, no surprise. Derek's the only _real_ morning person here, but Bitty's at least been conditioned by three years of life with Jack Zimmermann. Stiles shuffles out of the bedroom as Bitty's hitting the shower, which gives Stiles time to enact his morning ritual of taking a huge swig of coffee and then swearing copiously when it burns his tongue.

Mason rolls in fifteen minutes later. Five minutes after that, Shitty's dubious hatchback rattles into the parking lot. Stiles gets out of the shower looking marginally more awake, though he clutches his travel mug of coffee to his chest and eyes the others suspiciously. Being an alpha is like being the shepherd of a flock of snarling, easily distracted sheep. Derek sends up an apology to his mother's spirit for being such an obstinate, lackadaisical _asshole_ as an adolescent and teenager.

Derek texts Shitty, _You coming up_? A few seconds later, Shitty replies, _nah man me n lards are chillin in your fine scenic parking lot_

Derek huffs a laugh and puts away his phone. He and Shitty have been friends for two years and pack for seven months, and Derek _still_ can never tell when Shitty's stoned and when he's being… _himself_. He hopes Lardo's driving today, just in case.

Once Stiles is reassured that they really do have enough road snacks, Derek herds his unruly flock out the door and into the elevator. He puts himself between Stiles and Mason when they get into a slap-fight over… _something_ and keeps Bitty from tripping over his feet at least twice because his eyes are glued to his text conversation with Jack. He reaches the door with a sigh of profound relief. Once everyone's outside, it's a matter of herding them into the car, and then they can be as rowdy as they want because Derek has a lot of practice at tuning them out.

Derek steps outside, looks around the parking lot for Shitty's car—and freezes. The others slam into his back and laugh at his sudden lack of grace. Then a voice across the parking lot calls, "Hey! We doing this or not?"

"No _way_ ," Stiles breathes. He shoves an unresisting Derek aside and sprints across the parking lot. He gets clobbered halfway across and goes down in a tangle of limbs and hair, laughing all the way to the ground. "Oh my god, _Catwoman_!" he yells.

Mason looks at the pile on the concrete, then at the car, and raises an eyebrow. "So. Boyd and Erica are here."

"Yeah." Derek walks quickly across the parking lot until he's standing in front of Boyd. They don't say a word, just pull each other into a fierce hug. They break apart, and Derek stands with a hand at the nape of Boyd's neck, trying to find a way to say "what the hell are you doing here?" that doesn't _sound_ like "what the hell are you doing here?"

"Shitty and Lardo picked us up from Logan this morning." Which doesn't answer Derek's unspoken question, but—"You're an alpha again."

Derek's dimly aware of Stiles and Erica getting to their feet behind him, with a lot of needless scuffling. He knows Erica had a thing for Stiles before she was turned, and Stiles _definitely_ had a thing for her after, but now their dynamic is pure sibling antagonism—hilarious to watch when Derek's entire world isn't being turned on its head again.

"We've been talking about this off and on since you and Stiles came to Beacon Hills at Christmas," Erica says, leaning an arm heavily on Stiles' shoulders. So heavily that Stiles is struggling to stay upright. "Scott's a good guy, and he's an okay alpha when he actually listens to other people. And when he stops acting like being a werewolf is the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the world."

"But he's never felt like _our_ alpha," Boyd says. "You do."

He stares from Boyd to Erica. He was a _horrible_ alpha the first time. Almost getting them all killed time and again, ignoring threats until they became crises, trying to strengthen the pack by intimidation rather than by encouraging pack bonds. He cannot fathom Erica and Boyd wanting to be his betas again.

But then he has a sudden and distinct recollection of Stiles at seventeen, fiercely telling him, "You don't get to tell me what I do or don't want. Tell me what _you_ want, and we'll go from there." So he smiles at them and says, past the pounding of his heart, "I'd be honored to have you in my pack."

Boyd and Erica exchange a look Derek can't read, and Erica smiles. "Nothing's decided yet. Everybody's changed. So we figure, road trip. Get to know the new pack?"

"Fuck yes! Let's do this thing!" Shitty yells.

Stiles heads for the Toyota, but Derek redirects him toward Shitty and Lardo. Stiles gapes at him and says, "What?"

"If Boyd and Erica want to get to know my new pack, they should ride with the member of the new pack they haven't had any time with. You and Mason ride with Shitty and Lardo. I'll take Bitty, Boyd, and Erica."

Derek ignores Stiles as he staggers around, hand on his heart, demanding to know how he'll survive the endless voyage without his boo by his side. Derek looks at Bitty, who's sneaking glances at Erica like he's afraid she's going to eat him. She does make… quite an impression.

Stiles pulls Erica aside and says something to her, quiet and insistent. Derek tunes out so he doesn't overhear anything he's not meant to, but he keeps watching. Erica laughs at whatever Stiles said, patting his cheek patronizingly. Stiles grabs her hand and speaks again, his face set in hard lines. Erica looks startled but then shakes her head and puts a hand on Stiles' arm, now looking terribly earnest. Expression clearing in obvious relief, Stiles pulls her into a hug, which she goes into easily. When they separate, Stiles says something that makes her laugh, and she pushes him toward the station wagon. He goes, tripping once before he climbs into the back next to Mason.

Erica comes back to the Toyota, and the smile she gives Bitty is almost sweet. Bitty looks like he doesn't believe it for a second, but he seems a little more at ease, and even more when Erica blows Boyd a kiss and slides into the front passenger seat. As Bitty climbs into the back, Derek catches his eye in the rearview and raises an eyebrow. Bitty considers for a second and then nods, smiling tentatively. Derek nods back, pulls out of the parking space, and starts the drive to Nashua.

Here goes something.

* * *

Everyone looks beat as they trudge up the walkway toward the Haus. Well, everyone except Shitty, but Shitty has three modes: on, off, and hungover. He's on now, ranting about something that Jack can't make out, waving his hands and almost clocking the guy next to him, who looks like a solid wall of quietly amused befuddlement. Probably Boyd, then.

Bitty's face breaks into a smile when he spots Jack. He darts up the steps and throws himself into Jack's arms with a contented sigh. Jack squeezes him so tightly his feet leave the ground, and he laughs into Jack's neck.

"Hey, sweetpea," he says happily.

"Welcome back, mon chou," Jack says, returning him to the ground. "Did it go okay?"

An unnerving twinkle comes into Bitty's eyes. Jack knows that twinkle. It's the "Bitty and Stiles are up to something" twinkle, and he and Derek have bemoaned it many times. "Mr. Zimmermann, you have _no_ idea."

Jack blinks. "Well, no, I don't. That's why I asked."

Someone squeals, and suddenly a stunning blonde woman is draped over Bitty's back. "Bitty, oh my _god_!"

"What did I tell you, Ms. Reyes?" Bitty says smugly.

She squeezes Bitty before letting him go and saying sincerely, "I'm sorry I doubted you." She steps up to Jack and holds out her hand. "Erica Reyes. We're going to be packmates." Jack can't hear anyone else say anything, but Erica whips around and glares at Boyd. "I'm a _joy_ to be around, Boyd, you are such a liar." She turns back to Jack, smile wide. "Ignore him. He's grumpy because he and Lardo and Derek were deprived of their silent brooding time today."

Jack raises his eyebrows. "Good to know," he says.

Bitty fans himself. "Lord, Erica, the four of them are gonna brood together, and we're gonna _die_."

"God, I'd do any of them," Erica sighs. "Or all four of them together."

Bitty laughs and hooks his arm through Erica's. He squeezes Jack's arm as he passes, meeting Jack's eyes in a brief question that Jack's not sure how to answer.

The rest of the pack files past into the Haus, saying hi to Jack and, in Shitty's case, rubbing his face all over Jack's face and neck to scent-mark him. Lardo introduces Jack to Boyd, who seems every bit as calm and centered as Erica seemed vivacious and scattered, and Jack feels an immediate if superficial kinship with him.

Derek's the last up the steps, leading two people in their early 40s and two kids who look about nine and twelve. "Christine, Nadine, this is Jack. He's also allied to our pack. Jack, Christine and Nadine from the Biel pack. Christine is Alpha Hawes' daughter."

Christine and Nadine shake Jack's hand in a way that makes it clear they don't recognize him. The younger kid looks bored out of his mind. But the older one leans close as she passes Jack on the porch and whispers, "You guys were totally robbed against the Flames last night. Grandpa says we're supposed to be Canes fans, because they used to play in Connecticut, but they're big jerks who moved away. You guys play better anyway, _and_ you're a lot nicer."

Jack chokes trying to fight back his laugh. "Thank you, um..."

"Alexis."

"Thank you for supporting the Falconers, Alexis." His media-ready reply is on the tip of his tongue, but he can't bring himself to say it, so he leans down and whispers, "I think we were robbed, too."

Alexis giggles, and they go into the Haus together, bound by the camaraderie of shared confidences. Derek's waiting inside the door, and he raises an eyebrow at Jack. Jack nods in reply, and they let Alexis run ahead of them up the stairs.

"Intense kid," Jack notes quietly.

Derek shrugs. "Tween werewolf. Everything's a lot. All the time."

Jack snorts, picturing Derek at that age. Picturing _Shitty_ at that age. "The trip was okay?"

Derek shudders. "The world isn't ready for Bitty and Erica as friends. Otherwise, yes."

The reunion between Christine and the Haus ghosts is very weird to Jack. He and Bitty can't see or hear the ghosts, but everyone else in the room seems trained right on them. Jack huddles close to Bitty and tries not to feel like a wall is separating them from the pack. He certainly never thought alliance with a werewolf pack was what he needed in his life, but he suspects that, if he lost it, he'd feel that loss for the rest of his life.

"I'm so sorry," Christine is saying, holding her hands out. Tears have been running down her face since the ghosts arrived. "No, it's not—I'm a werewolf. The hunters were trying to get to me. There was mountain ash around the house and wolfsbane in the punch, and I didn't realize that— No, yes, I _know_ Samwell's neutral territory, but— Yes." Her shoulders sag. "No. I guess that's not my fault," she says quietly. "Not my fault at all."

Nadine is standing behind her, one hand on Alexis' shoulder and the other arm around the shoulders of their son—Jack never had caught his name. All three of them shuffle closer to Christine, who smiles and introduces them to the ghosts. A ripple of muted laughter runs through the rest of the group, and Bitty clutches Jack's hand so hard it aches.

"Oh, gosh, we are being _super_ rude!" Jack hears a new voice say. Suddenly there's a blue-white glow in front of Christine, and Jack can make out the shape of two young women in it. Bitty gasps quietly next to him, and they instinctively take two steps forward (it says a lot about their lives that their instinct is to walk _toward_ two ghosts). "Hi! I'm Mandy, and this is Jenny," one of the shapes says.

"You guys are _super_ cute," the other one says.

"I mean, we try not to watch _too_ much."

"But we get bored."

Beside him, Bitty laughs a little nervously. "Well, aren't you two the sweetest things," he says.

The ghosts turn back to Christine. "We're glad you're okay," Mandy says.

"Yeah, and what those super-gross hunters did to us _wasn't_ your fault, okay? You were just trying to, like, get an education. _They're_ the jerks."

"Did anything ever happen to them?"

Nadine's face that twists and reddens at that. "Oh, yes," she says with a brutal edge to her voice. "They were dealt with."

In contrast, Christine's giggle is almost obscene. "That's how Nadine and I met. Her pack came to help deal with the hunters and the wards after you two..."

"Died," Jenny supplies cheerfully.

"Yeah," Christine says, subdued. She looks at the ghosts. "So... is that it for you two? Your unresolved issue is resolved now. Will you stop being ghosts and move on to... whatever's next?"

Jenny and Mandy look at each other. "Oh, wow, we could, couldn't we?" Jenny asks.

"Yeah, but." Mandy shakes her head. "The thing is, we _like_ being ghosts. I don't know. I think we're supposed to _want_ to move on, but we don't. Not yet."

Jenny shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe when college boys stop being cute."

"And girls," Mandy says quietly.

" _What_?" Jenny shrieks.

Jack can't see the ghosts as clearly as he's pretty sure the others can, but he recognizes that sheepish downward tilt to Mandy's head. "I don't know," she mumbles. "The early '90s weren't, uh... I mean."

" _Mandy, it's Samwell_!" Jenny yells.

Shitty puts a hand over his heart and says, "Thank you for trusting us with this moment, brah."

The blue-white light pops off. Jack blinks and looks around. The light comes back, though the ghosts are even less distinct. "Uh, like, super sorry for that," Jenny says, "but _apparently_ I need to have a long talk with my best friend for _really ever._ "

"Christine, it was, like, _so amazing_ to see you," Mandy says hurriedly. If ghosts could blush, her face would be incredibly red. "We're, like, super thrilled your life turned out so awesome."

"Thank you both," Christine calls, but the ghosts are already fading out of sight again, the sounds of their bickering faintly audible in the space where they used to be.

There is a long, pendent silence. Then Stiles says abruptly, "Well, that was _weird_. Who else needs pancakes?"

Christine laughs weakly and wipes her eyes. Glancing around the room, Jack sees a lot of tears being wiped away by his packmates. He's dry-eyed, himself, but something in his chest aches. "Hey," Christine asks, "is Jerry's still around?"

Shitty laughs and squeezes himself between Christine and Nadine, throwing an arm around each of them. "Man, I knew there was a reason I liked you."

* * *

By this point, Derek has turned his hearing pretty much all the way off. In a packed stadium _screaming_ at top volume to celebrate the home team's nail-biter Stanley Cup victory? Yeah, it's basically the only way for a werewolf to survive that.

Derek looks around for the pack. It helps keep him grounded, knowing where they are. Jack's on the ice, obviously, Eric headed toward him as fast as the crowd will let him move. Lardo's taking selfies with Justin and Adam. Stiles is right beside him, jumping up and down and screaming. The others hadn't been able to come to the game, but Boyd, Erica, and Mason are hosting a watch party in Beacon Hills, and he'd bet anything that Shitty is not-so-secretly watching on his phone during the presentation he had not, no matter how hard he tried, been able to reschedule.

Derek reaches for Stiles' hand. Stiles keeps jumping up and down, and he's vibrating with excitement, but he stills enough to grab back and hold on tight. "Come on," Stiles shouts in Derek's ear, even though he doesn't need to, "let's get you out of here." They'll see Jack later at his apartment; Derek's not looking forward to the giant party that's going to be there, but it'll be better than here.

Derek nods and squeezes Stiles' hand. They turn away from the ice and start easing their way past still-screaming Providence fans toward the end of their row.

Despite what Scott periodically tells his betas, the pack bond doesn't allow packmembers to feel each other's emotions or know each other's locations. Derek has a general sense of whether everyone is safe and well, and a relative sense of distance—Stiles, right beside him, is a far stronger presence than Mason, Boyd, and Erica in California. But he can't usually tell what anyone in his pack is feeling at a given time.

_Except._

Except that there are rare moments when emotions flare so strongly that everyone in the pack gets hit with it. When his family died, that was sure as fuck one of those moments. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac swore they felt the intense protectiveness and raw desperation Derek was feeling at the moment he gave up his alpha powers. When Stiles proposed—that might be the only _positive_ one of those moments he's ever experienced.

Until now.

Something flares across the pack bond, something bright and brave and delirious with glee. Stiles and Derek turn as one. Derek's eyes are wide as he scans the ice for—

While the confetti rains down and the fans scream their support and reporters try to shove their way into the players' celebrations, Jack and Eric stand at center ice, so wrapped up in each other that everyone else might as well be gone. The kiss isn't frantic or wild; it's not something they threw themselves into without thinking. Derek's seen them kiss like this a dozen times, at Jack's place, at Derek's, in the Haus. This kiss isn't showing the world two dudes kissing randomly in the heat of the moment; it's showing the world two men deeply in love. All that love is flowing to Derek through the pack bond.

Stiles is screaming his head off. Derek would roll his eyes at the tactlessness, but he sort of feels the way Stiles sounds right now. God, the conversations Derek and Jack have had about coming out, how badly Jack's wanted to tell the whole world how much he loves Eric. There'd been a plan, Derek knows. A full and rather convoluted plan designed and orchestrated by Georgia Martin. Derek is one hundred percent sure this kiss was _not_ part of that plan.

As Derek tries to figure out the next step, Stiles starts shoving him up the stairs. "Go, go, go!" he shouts, pushing his free hand against Derek's shoulder.

Derek scowls back at him. "What are you doing?"

"Getting us out of here!" Stiles shouts.

"Jack and Eric—"

"Will be whisked away by either Falcs PR or Bad Bob in, like, _seconds_. Our plan doesn't change." When Derek tries to protest again, Stiles stops, turns him so they're facing each other, and cups Derek's cheek in his hand. Derek presses slightly into the touch, enjoying the contrast between Stiles' slightly chilled skin and the warmed wood of his ring. "Derek," Stiles says seriously, "Jack 'my anxiety is the world's business' Zimmermann and Eric 'I've buried my PTSD in pie' Bittle are down there, on the ice, kissing in front of many thousands of hockey fans. The best thing we can do right now is what we planned to do all along. We go to Jack's place, and we make sure that it is a safe place for them to be whenever they get there."

Derek closes his eyes. Jack and Eric seem so calm and contented right now, so sure of themselves, that it's difficult to imagine them having a second of anxiety about this. But Derek knows damned well that's not how anxiety works, so he opens his eyes, forces that feeling of _rightness_ into the background, and nods. Stiles grins and kisses Derek quickly—a faint but resonant echo of the one happening on the ice—and leads them out of the arena.

The thing is, though: once he gets past the initial shock of it, this doesn't surprise Derek. The man who bought Eric a new oven before they were even dating, who ultimately chose his apartment based on its kitchen without realizing why, who managed to argue that five dozen roses counted as one Valentine's Day gift and everything from Beyoncé's clothing line as one birthday gift—that man's romantic gestures are as dramatic as they are uncalculated. Jack does what he does for Eric because he _can,_ and because he feels that Eric deserves it, not because it wins him "boyfriend points" or makes him look good to his friends. He's 110% in because he doesn't know how to be otherwise, and he'd rather do something than talk about it.

So a press conference where he sits behind a table, tells the world he's bisexual, and lets reporters ask invasive and insensitive questions about his personal life? Really not his thing. Kissing the man he loves at center ice after winning the Stanley Cup, so everyone sees how much they mean to each other without either of them saying a word? That's Jack's style to a T.

Derek's never been prouder to know Jack Zimmermann.

*

"Wake up! Hey! Derek! Fucking—fucking Jesus _wake up, man_."

Derek wakes up in a haze. He was fairly wasted last night (Erica and Stiles make the best wolfsbane liquor), but it burns off quickly enough once he goes to sleep. Still, there hadn't been a _lot_ of sleep, and it wasn't of the highest quality, since he and Stiles were crammed into the guest bed with Chris and Caitlin. He also needs to drink approximately a Lake Erie's-worth of water.

It's Shitty, he realizes, shaking Derek so hard the whole bed rattles, hissing at him to wake up. He's wild-eyed and shaking, oblivious to the pieces of paper stuck to his naked torso, clutching his phone like it's a poisonous snake he can't let go of but doesn't want close to him.

Only it's not Shitty's phone. It's Eric's. Derek blinks, trying to clear the fog from his eyes. "What?" Behind him, he feels the change in Stiles' breathing that means he's waking up.

"Dude, where the fuck are Jack 'n' Bits?"

Derek squints and waves his hand out into the general chaos of the apartment. "Somewhere?"

" _They're not_ ," Shitty hisses. "That's the _problem._ And Bits doesn't have his _phone_." He waves the phone like it's personally responsible for everything wrong with Western civilization.

"Who're you talking to?" Stiles asks groggily.

" _Mama Bittle_!" Shitty says with a surprising amount of sibilance for a phrase with no actual sibilants.

"Crap." Stiles sits up, rubbing his face, and reaches a hand across Derek, making a gimme motion at Shitty. "I'll talk to her." He takes the phone, takes a deep breath, and unmutes it. "Hey, Suzanne. No, it's Stiles. I— No, I'm sorry; Bitty's stepped away and— No, I know. What a win last night, right? Oh, uh, you saw that, huh? Yeah, uh—" Stiles turns his back on Derek and Shitty, climbing quickly but carefully over Derek and out of the bed.

"Okay," Shitty whispers to Derek, "but _where are they_?"

"Shitty, we've been asleep," Derek says. "How would we know?"

Shitty waves both hands at him. "Use your alpha senses!"

Derek rolls his eyes. "That is _not_ how—" He stops. Feels out the bond. Stiles, Shitty, and Lardo right here. Erica, Boyd, and Mason very faint in Beacon Hills. Jack and Bitty... Derek looks up at Shitty and shakes his head. "Wherever they are," he says, "I can't feel them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh noooooo, a cliffhanger! What can I say— _no one_ knew where Jack and Bitty were at the end of "Post"!
> 
> I've only ever heard of there being _one_ Morozko, like Jack Frost or Father Christmas, as opposed to it being a _type_ of being, like werewolves or selkies. (Don't throw rocks at selkies!) I took some liberties, based on the fact that there are _7+ billion people_ in the world. It's too much for one being to handle! My apologies to any folklore purists out there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos and comments; I enjoy knowing which parts are resonating with folks. 
> 
> You can swing by my [tumblr](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com/), too. It's a mess, but it's home.


End file.
